Sheridan Taylor Gibler Jr. (born May 21, 1970[2][1][3]), known professionally as Taylor Sheridan, is an American writer, producer, director and actor. He is best known as the co-creator of the television series Yellowstone and creator of its prequels 1883 (2021) and 1923 (2022).
Sheridan was born in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.[6] Several news articles have reported that he grew up on a ranch in Cranfills Gap, Texas, but he was raised in Fort Worth, Texas, the son of a cardiologist.[6] His cowboy identity comes from his mother, who was originally from Waco and loved visiting her grandparents' ranch in that area.[7] When Sheridan was eight years old, his mother insisted on buying a ranch in Cranfills Gap so that her children would "learn firsthand about the peaceful feeling of freedom in nature".[7] Sheridan learned how to be a cowboy during his family's frequent visits to the Cranfills Gap ranch when he was growing up in the late 1980s.[6] Meanwhile, he attended and graduated from R. L. Paschal High School, where he was "the rare weekend wrangler who was also a theater kid".[7]
After Sheridan dropped out of Texas State University, he moved to Austin, where he mowed lawns and painted houses. While looking for jobs in a shopping mall, Sheridan met a talent scout, who offered him the chance to go to Chicago and pursue an acting career. He later lived in New York City and Los Angeles during his time as an actor.[8][9]
The low-budget horror film Vile is credited as Sheridan's first film, but he does not consider the film his directorial debut, stating in a 2017 Rotten Tomatoes interview:
I would say this [Wind River] is my feature debut. A friend of mine raised — I don't know what he raised — 20 grand or something, and cast his buddies, and wrote this bad horror movie, that I told him not to direct. He was going to direct it and produce it, and he started and freaked out, and called and said, "Can you help me?" I said, "Yeah, I'll try."
I kind of kept the ship pointed straight, and they went off and edited, and did what they did. I think it's generous to call me the director. I think he was try [sic] to say thank you, in some way. It was an excellent opportunity to point a camera and learn some lessons that actually benefited me on Wind River.[21]
His second feature as director, and third as screenwriter, Wind River, starring Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen, premiered at Sundance Film Festival in January 2017. The film follows an FBI agent (Olsen) and a veteran game tracker (Renner), investigating a murder that occurred on a Native American reservation. The Weinstein Company had acquired the distribution rights during the 2016 Cannes Film Festival,[22] but dropped the film prior to the Sundance premiere.[23] However, the company later finalized its deal to distribute it.[24]Wind River was widely released in the United States on August 18, 2017, following a brief limited release.[25] Following Sicario and Hell or High Water, Wind River is the third installment of Sheridan's trilogy of "the modern-day American frontier".[26]
On September 15, 2016, Deadline reported that Sheridan had been set by Sony Pictures and Escape Artists to script the American remake of the Matthias Schoenaerts drama-thriller film Disorder, a 2015 French film directed by Alice Winocour. Escape Artists' Todd Black, Jason Blumenthal, Steve Tisch and Tony Shaw were scheduled to produce the remake and David Beaubaire to oversee it for the studio.[27]James Mangold was going to direct.
Sheridan wrote the sequel to Sicario, titled Sicario: Day of the Soldado, which was directed by Stefano Sollima and released in 2018.[29] More recently, his overall deal with ViacomCBS was renewed.[30]
In May 2019, it was announced Warner Bros. Pictures and New Line Cinema acquired distribution rights to the film Those Who Wish Me Dead with Sheridan as director.[31] The film had a theatrical debut internationally in South Korea on May 5, 2021.[32] In the United States, it was released on May 14, 2021.[33]
Style
As an actor, Sheridan has explained that the amount of expositional dialogue he read for television caused him to form an "allergy to exposition" in his writing. He has also said that he looks for "absurdly simple" plots in order to focus solely on character.[34] He has cited the Coen brothers, Cormac McCarthy, and Larry McMurtry as influential to his writing.[35]
