Josh Schwartz

He married Jill Stonerock on September 20, 2008. He is good friends with the actress Rachel Bilson who was the maid of honor at his wedding. The couple has one daughter.

He was born as Joshua Ian "Josh" Schwartz on August 6, 1976, Providence, Rhode Island to Jewish parents. Both his parents, father Stephen Schwartz and mother Honey were toy inventors and had worked on the development of toys such as Transformers and My Little Pony before opening their own company.

He is the eldest among three siblings and has one younger brother and one sister.

From a young age, Josh loved to watch movies, and was fascinated by Hollywood. Another one of his loves was writing. As a little boy he often dreamed of becoming a writer.

Josh Schwartz went to Providence's private Wheeler School and graduated in 1994. As a student he began writing scripts that focused on the lives of his friends. He was also a good actor and often impersonated the characters he saw on television. He also actively participated in school plays.

He entered the University of Southern California (USC) in 1995 to study screen and television writing. There he became a member of the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity. During this time he tried his hand at stand-up comedy but soon realized that this was not his forte.

He developed into a skilled scriptwriter while still in the university and sold his first screenplay to Sony's TriStar Pictures in 1997. However, the movie was never made.

He wrote a TV pilot called ‘Brookfield’ ABC/Disney while he was still studying at USC. The story which was about a group of wealthy kids in a boarding school was sold just a few months after the sale of his first script. This too was never aired.

Josh Schwartz decided to drop out of USC in order to concentrate on his career. He wrote a pilot called ‘The O.C.’ for Warner Bros. TV and Wonderland Sound and Vision in 2003. The TV show was produced with him as creator and executive producer.

’The O.C.’ was a teen drama, revolving around a group of teenagers and their families living in the wealthy seaside community of Newport Beach in Orange County, CA. It debuted on the Fox Network in August 2003.

The show became an instant hit with the teenagers who could easily connect with the characters of Ryan Atwood, his brother Seth, and their neighbor Marissa Cooper who were portrayed in the series. The show became popular rapidly and soon gained a following among not just teenagers, but also older adults.

His claim to fame was the teen drama series ‘The O.C.’ which became one of the most popular new dramas of the 2003–2004 television season. The series premiered with high ratings and is regarded as a as a pop cultural phenomenon, and has been broadcast in more than 50 countries worldwide.