Hancock Lee

Early life

Hancock was born in Longview, Texas. His father, John Lee, Sr. played college football for Baylor University and had a brief run with the Chicago Cardinals in the NFL. Brothers Joe and Kevin also played college football (at Vanderbilt and Baylor, respectively), with Kevin playing professionally for the Indianapolis Colts. Hancock received an undergraduate degree in English and a law degree from Baylor University. Hancock practiced law for four years before he found himself drawn to the world of films.

Career

Hancock's debut as a screenwriter and director came in 1991 with Hard Time Romance. He worked on two more films as a screenwriter with A Perfect World and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil before making his first directing effort since 1991 in 2002 with the sports drama The Rookie, which was a success both critically and commercially. In 2004, he wrote and directed The Alamo, which was highly unsuccessful at the box office, and would become the second-highest box office bomb in movie history. Five years later, he made the Academy Award-winning The Blind Side, which was extremely successful and received an Academy Award for Best Picture nomination. He co-wrote the upcoming musical film The Goree Girls and re-teamed with Disney for Saving Mr. Banks, a film about the life of P.L. Travers and her difficult negotiations with Walt Disney over adapting her famous novel Mary Poppins into a feature film.

Hancock directed the film The Founder (2016), about the McDonald's fast food chain.

Filmography