A former documentarian who became a hot screenwriter during the 1990s, William Nicholson is best known for "Shadowlands", his version of the romance between the writers C.S. Lewis and Joy Gresham. First made as a British TV drama in 1985, "Shadowlands" was subsequently the basis for both a stage play (1989), starring Nigel Hawthorne, and a 1993 feature film starring Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger. For the latter, the screenwriter earned an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay.Soon after graduating from Cambridge, Nicholson began working as a trainee at the BBC. By the mid-70s, he had
