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Lawrence Bender

Lawrence has produced all of Quentin Tarantino's feature films - Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction (for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture), Jackie Brown, and both volumes of Kill Bill. His additional producing credits include Boaz Yakim's Fresh and A Price Above Rubies (with Renee Zellweger), Gus Van Sant's Good Will Hunting (for which he also received an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture), Andy Tennant's Anna and the King (with Jodie Foster and Chow Yun Fat), Gore Verbinski's The Mexican (with Julia Roberts and Brad Pitt), Brian Koppelman and David Levien's Knockaround Guys and Guy Ferland's Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights.

Worlds away from Hollywood, Bender studied civil engineering at the University of Maine. He later was a dancer who toured Maine and Massachusetts with the Ralph Robertson Ballet Company. He earned a scholarship to study with Fame choreographer Louis Falco in New York, before his dancing career was cut short by a series of injuries. After dancing, he began acting classes with famed coach Sandra Seacat and appeared in several films and stage productions, including a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream with Ellen Burstyn and Christopher Walken.

Supporting himself with production jobs on New York-based film crews, Bender discovered that he enjoyed the work, and kept his eyes open for an opportunity to produce on his own. In 1987, working with an overall budget of $125,000, he produced writer-director Scott Speigel's The Intruder.

A year later, Bender met Quentin Tarantino at a BBQ at Scott Speigel's house. They quickly became friends and started discussing making movies together. Soon after, Tarantino wrote Reservoir Dogs. It was Bender who made Dogs possible by securing the involvement of actor Harvey Keitel through his own acting teacher.

Tarantino and Bender formed a production company together, A Band Apart, in 1993. The partnership has produced films in which Tarantino was involved either as the director or as an actor or both, including Four Rooms (1995) and Robert Rodriguez's From Dusk Till Dawn (1996).

Bender was also an executive producer, with Tarantino, on Roger Avary's directorial debut Killing Zoe. In 1996 Bender launched a new division, A Band Apart Commercials, which makes ad spots and music videos.

Bender's films have been honored with nineteen Academy Award nominations. Good Will Hunting received a total of nine nominations, and won Oscars for Best Original Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor. Bender was nominated for a Producers Guild Award and a Golden Satellite Award for Good Will Hunting, and also received a Producers Guild Award nomination for Pulp Fiction.

Bender recently completed production on Casas de Carton, a Spanish language film directed by Luis Mandoki. Another Bender production, The Great Raid will be an upcoming release by Miramax Films.