What Is Alan Ball's Net Worth?
Alan Ball is an American screenwriter, playwright, director, and producer who has a net worth of $40 million. Alan Ball won an Academy Award for writing the screenplay for the 1999 film "American Beauty." He created the HBO series "Six Feet Under" (2001–2005), "True Blood" (2008–2014), and "Here and Now" (2018) and the ABC sitcom "Oh, Grow Up" (1999), and he served as a writer and executive producer on all four shows. He also directed episodes of "Six Feet Under," "True Blood," and "Here and Now." Ball has written plays such as "Cherokee County" (1985), "Five Women Wearing the Same Dress" (1993) and "All That I Will Ever Be" (2007), and he has written for the television series "Grace Under Fire" (1994–1995) and "Cybill" (1995–1998). Ball wrote, directed, and produced the films "Towelhead" (2007) and "Uncle Frank" (2020), and he produced the TV movie "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" (2017).
Early Life
Alan Ball was born Alan Erwin Ball on May 13, 1957, in Marietta, Georgia. He is the son of homemaker Mary Ball and aircraft inspector Frank Ball. Alan had an older sister named Mary Ann, who tragically died in a car accident at the age of 22. A 2002 "Washington Post" article about Alan stated, "Mary Ann Ball, at the wheel of the car, was instantly killed when she turned onto a blind curve and hit an oncoming car. The writer and director, then 13, was in the passenger seat. For him, the trauma of watching his closest sibling die became a defining experience, the great divide that separated everything that came before from everything that followed." After graduating from high school, Ball studied at the University of Georgia before earning a theater arts degree from Florida State University in 1980. After college, he worked with Sarasota's General Nonsense Theater Company as a playwright.
Career
Alan began his television career as a writer for the ABC sitcom "Grace Under Fire" in 1994, writing the episodes "The Road to Paris, Texas," "Grace vs. Wade," "A Night at the Opera," and "Memphis Bound." From 1995 to 1998, he wrote 13 episodes of the CBS series "Cybill." Ball created the 1999 ABC sitcom "Oh, Grow Up," and that year his screenplay for "American Beauty" was turned into an Academy Award-winning film that grossed $356.3 million against a $15 million budget. Besides winning the Academy Award for Best Picture, the film earned Alan an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, and it also won Best Director (Sam Mendes), Best Actor (Kevin Spacey), and Best Cinematography (Conrad Hall). Next, he created the HBO series "Six Feet Under," which ran from 2001 to 2005, airing 63 episodes over five seasons. Ball directed six episodes of the series and wrote nine of them. The series received 44 Primetime Emmy nominations, winning nine, and it won a Golden Globe for Best Television Series – Drama in 2002.
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Alan wrote, directed, and produced the 2007 film "Towelhead," which was based on the 2005 Alicia Erian novel of the same name. Next, he created the HBO series "True Blood," which aired 80 episodes over seven seasons from 2008 to 2014. The series was based on Charlaine Harris' "The Southern Vampire Mysteries," and Ball served as the showrunner during the first five seasons. "True Blood" earned Golden Globe nominations for Best Television Series – Drama in 2008 and 2009, and it won a GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Drama Series (2011) and People's Choice Awards for Favorite TV Obsession (2010) and Favorite Premium Cable TV show (2013). Alan wrote 11 episodes of the series and directed two season one episodes. He executive produced the 2017 HBO movie "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks," which was based on the best-selling 2010 Rebecca Skloot nonfiction book of the same name. The film received a Primetime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Television Movie. Ball created the 2018 HBO drama "Here and Now," which ran for 10 episodes. Alan wrote three episodes of the show, and he directed the series premiere. He wrote, directed, and produced the 2020 Amazon Studios film "Uncle Frank," and it won several awards, including a GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding TV Movie and a Golden Nymph Award for Best Film.
Personal Life
Alan is gay, and the LGBTQ publication "Out" magazine included him on its list of "The Men and Women Who Made 2008 a Year to Remember." Ball has been in a relationship with actor Peter Macdissi since the early 2000s. Macdissi has appeared in several of Ball's projects, including "Towelhead," "Here and Now," and "Uncle Frank." Alan is a Buddhist, and he has said that his faith has influenced his filmmaking. In an interview with Amazon, he said of the inspiration for the plastic bag scene from "American Beauty," "I had an encounter with a plastic bag! And I didn't have a video camera, like Ricky does. I'm sure some people would look at that and go, 'What a psycho!' But it was a very intense and very real moment. There's a Buddhist notion of the miraculous within the mundane, and I think we certainly live in a culture that encourages us not to look for that."
Awards and Nominations
In 2000, Ball won an Academy Award for Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen for "American Beauty." The film also earned him awards from the Golden Globes, Critics Choice Awards, Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association Awards, London Critics Circle Film Awards, Southeastern Film Critics Association Awards, Writers Guild of America Awards, Online Film & Television Association, and Awards Circuit Community Awards and nominations from the BAFTA Awards, Chicago Film Critics Association Awards, Satellite Awards, Las Vegas Film Critics Society Awards, Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards, National Society of Film Critics Awards, Online Film Critics Society Awards, Toronto Film Critics Association Awards, and Chlotrudis Awards. Alan has received nine Primetime Emmy nominations, six for "Six Feet Under," one for "True Blood," one for "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks," and one for "Uncle Frank." He won for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series for "Six Feet Under" in 2002. For "Six Feet Under," Ball also earned three Directors Guild of America Award nominations (winning in 2002), four PGA Award nominations (winning in 2004), a Writers Guild of America Award nomination, and two Online Film & Television Association Award nominations. He also received three Gold Derby Award nominations for the show, and it won the award for Drama Episode of the Decade for "Everyone's Waiting" in 2010.
For "True Blood," Alan won a Jupiter Award for Best International TV Series (2011) and earned a Bram Stoker Award nomination for Screenplay for the episode "Spellbound" (2011), a BAFTA Award nomination for Best International (2010), a Writers Guild of America Award nomination for New Series (2009), and two PGA Award nominations for Outstanding Producer of Episodic Television, Drama (2010 and 2011). At the ShoWest Convention, Ball was named Screenwriter of the Year in 2000 and Groundbreaking Filmmaker of the Year in 2008, and in 2002, he was honored with the Stephen F. Kolzak Award at the GLAAD Media Awards. Alan has received three nominations from the Deauville Film Festival, taking home an Audience Award for "Uncle Frank" in 2020. His other nominations were for the Grand Special Prize for "Towelhead" and "Uncle Frank." He also earned an Audience Award for U.S. Cinema at the Mill Valley Film Festival and a Writers Guild of America Award nomination for Original Long Form for "Uncle Frank." In 2017, Ball received a Black Reel Award for Television nomination for Outstanding TV Movie/Limited Series for "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks." In 2021, he was inducted into the Online Film & Television Association Hall of Fame in the Behind the Scenes category.
Real Estate
In October 2014 Alan bought Sheryl Crow's 10-acre Hollywood Hills compound for $11.085 million. This house remains his primary property.
In March 2016, Ball put his 6,000+ square foot Hollywood Hills home on the market for $8.5 million. A guesthouse, gym, swimming pool, pool house, and aviary sit on the property, and the home includes a library and home theater. The home sold for $7.115 million in July 2017. Here is a video tour:
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