Billy Ray, Academy Award-Nominated Screenwriter, to Speak and Be Honored at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television

Academy Award-nominated screenwriter Billy Ray (Captain Phillips) will be the guest speaker and honoree during the first day of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television's (UCLA TFT) two-day Orientation, on Tuesday, Sept. 20, welcoming students to a new academic year.

"We are thrilled to welcome Billy Ray back to campus as our special guest speaker and honoree at Orientation," says UCLA TFT Interim Dean Brian Kite. "He cares deeply about the state of our society, and his ability to synthesize real-life current events into top-notch dramas such as THE COMEY RULE and Captain Phillips highlights how he is one of the best in the business. I know our students will find him to be both fascinating and enlightening."

Ray, a 1985 UCLA graduate, wrote the Oscar-nominated screenplay for Captain Phillips, for which he won a WGA Award in 2014. He also wrote, directed and executive-produced Showtime's The Comey Rule, which had the biggest debut of any limited series in that network's history. Ray's films as writer, co-writer, or writer-director include The Hunger Games, Richard Jewell, Shattered Glass and Breach. He serves on the boards of Common Defense and Big Sunday.

"I believe in storytelling. Learning how to do it gave me a career and a beautiful life," Ray says. "I believe in hard work; without it, success is impossible. I believe in movies; they celebrate the human spirit, and they reflect our culture back to us; and I believe in UCLA. I was born a Bruin. That's why I come back here so often, and that's why I'm so grateful to be this year's Orientation speaker."

The UCLA School of Theater Film and Television is a premier, interdisciplinary global professional school that offers a comprehensive arts curriculum, giving motivated students the means to challenge the constructs around them as multifaceted artists and scholars, filled with the knowledge, insight and point of view to create meaningful experiences pointing toward a better world.

The school's unique approach to the art of storytelling - there are no silos or boundaries between theater, film, television, digital media, animation and leading-edge research - makes it the only institution in the world to integrate these disciplines within a single professional school.