--- name: "Bret Easton Ellis" canonical: "https://film.one/person/bret-easton-ellis" fi1m_id: "bret-easton-ellis" imdb_id: "nm0254735" tmdb_id: 16379 wikidata_id: "Q241583" roles: ["Writer"] born: "7 March 1964" reviewed_on_fi1m: 2 average_fi1m_score: 68 average_as: "writer" average_over: 2 updated: "2026-09-23T12:22:32.581198+00:00" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Bret Easton Ellis ## Identity Bret Easton Ellis - **Canonical:** https://film.one/person/bret-easton-ellis - **Type:** Person - **Fi1m ID:** bret-easton-ellis - **IMDb ID:** nm0254735 - **TMDB ID:** 16379 - **Wikidata ID:** Q241583 - **Same entity:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bret_Easton_Ellis, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q241583, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0254735/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/16379 Writer. Born 7 March 1964 in Los Angeles, California, USA. ## Details - **Work:** Writer - **Born:** 7 March 1964, Los Angeles, California, USA - **Active:** 2000–present - **Also known as:** Bret Ellis, Bret E. Ellis - **Average Fi1m score:** 68, as writer, over 2 titles - **Fi1m score by decade:** 2000s 80 (1), 2020s 56 (1) - **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bret_Easton_Ellis, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q241583, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0254735/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/16379 ## Streaming the US now - **Disney+:** [*The Shards*](https://film.one/tv/the-shards.md) (56) For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country. ## Fi1m on Bret Easton Ellis > Ellis writes in a flat voice about rich young people who feel nothing and buy everything, and on screen it has worked best when someone else directs it. Mary Harron found the joke; the series of *The Shards* has not found the fear. Patrick Bateman wants the other men at the table to notice his taste, his possessions and his appearance, and Christian Bale plays that wanting until it is exhausting to watch. That is Ellis's method carried onto the screen almost intact: the shopping and the killing described in the same level tone, with nobody stepping forward to say which one should trouble us. In Mary Harron's *American Psycho* (2000) we laughed for a long time, and then felt slightly ashamed of ourselves, because the joke was a man humiliated by the men he wanted to impress, and we had enjoyed that more than was comfortable. Harron and her co-writer Guinevere Turner put his vanity at the centre and let the horror take its chances. It was the right call. Ellis was a student at Bennington College when *Less Than Zero* came out in 1985, and the book fixed his subject for the decades that followed: rich, disaffected young people in Los Angeles or New York in the 1980s, drugs, parties, and something violent underneath that nobody quite mentions. *The Rules of Attraction* (1987) and the novel of *American Psycho* (1991) followed, then *Glamorama* (1998), *Lunar Park* (2005), a ghost story with a narrator called Bret Easton Ellis, and *Imperial Bedrooms* (2010). *The Shards* (2023), his first novel in thirteen years, went back to a Los Angeles prep school in 1981 and put a serial killer in it, with a narrator who again shares his name. The prose is flat by design, full of brand names and lists, and feeling keeps giving way to sensation. When it works, the flatness is the point. When it does not, the lists go on and the reader waits. The trouble with that voice is that it lives on the page. Ellis's own screenplays, *The Informers* (2008), *The Canyons* (2013) for Paul Schrader and *Smiley Face Killers* (2020), have been poorly received for their dialogue and tone, and since we have not reviewed them we will only say the pattern is telling. A camera cannot be affectless; it shows a room, and an actor has to say the line out loud and mean something by it. Harron got round this by treating the book as comedy. The series of *The Shards* (2026), which Ellis created with Ryan Murphy, has not got round it yet. Igby Rigney, playing a teenager called Bret Easton Ellis, is the clearest reason to watch, and he makes adolescent uncertainty interesting without becoming easy to read. Around him, suspicion gathers on a mysterious newcomer, the nine episodes give it room, and the tension keeps slipping away into diversions that would be easier to forgive if the mystery held. "Neutrality, distance, reserve: I have always believed in these things as my guiding aesthetic," Ellis said in 2019. Distance is a fine quality in a narrator and a hard one to film, and the best Ellis on screen so far is the version where somebody else decided what we should feel about him. Read the novels. Watch Harron. Give the series a couple of episodes for Rigney, and stop when you notice you have stopped worrying about who the killer is. ## Biography Bret Easton Ellis is an American novelist and screenwriter. His debut novel, *Less Than Zero*, was published in 1985. He is best known for *American Psycho* (1991), which was adapted into a film in 2000, and *The Shards* (2023), a semi-autobiographical work set in 1981 Los Angeles. Ellis created and wrote the television series adaptation of *The Shards*, which premiered in 2026. Other works adapted for the screen include *The Rules of Attraction* (2002) and *The Informers* (2008). *Sources: britannica.com, en.wikipedia.org.* ## On Fi1m (2) - *The Shards* (2026), Fi1m 56, Creator, Book, Writer, Executive Producer — [page](https://film.one/tv/the-shards.md) - *American Psycho* (2000), Fi1m 80, Novel — [page](https://film.one/film/american-psycho.md) ## Complete filmography (29) Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page. - *The Shards* (2026), series, Executive Producer, Writer, Book, Creator — Fi1m 56, [page](https://film.one/tv/the-shards.md) - *The End of the World* (2022), Actor - *Smiley Face Killers* (2021), Writer, Producer - *Kill, Kobek... Kill!* (2020), as Bret Easton Ellis - *The Loser* (2019), as Him - *The Arrangement* (2019), Screenplay, Director - *Less than Zero* (2019), Executive Producer - *The Deleted* (2016), series, as Interviewer (voice) · Executive Producer, Writer, Director, Creator - *Figaro* (2016), Director, Screenplay - *The Curse of Downers Grove* (2015), Screenplay, Executive Producer - *Orpheus* (2015), Director, Screenplay - *Glamorama* (2015), Original Story - *Placebo: Loud Like Love* (2014), as Voice - *The Canyons* (2013), Writer - *Placebo: Too Many Friends* (2013), as Voice - *Behind the Scenes of All That Glitters* (2010), Author, Director - *Inspired by Bret Easton Ellis* (2010), Characters, Thanks - *The Replacement Child* (2008), Thanks - *The Informers* (2008), Screenplay, Author, Producer, Executive Producer - *The Rules of Attraction* (2002), Novel - *Fernanda Pivano: A Farewell to Beat* (2001), as Se stesso - *American Psycho* (2000), Novel — Fi1m 80, [page](https://film.one/film/american-psycho.md) - *This Is Not an Exit: The Fictional World of Bret Easton Ellis* (1998), Writer - *Central Park West* (1995), series, Actor - *Less Than Zero* (1987), Novel - *Bait*, Screenplay - *American Psycho*, Novel, Executive Producer - *The Follower*, series, Creator - *Relapse*, Director, Writer ## Gallery - ![Bret Easton Ellis](https://film.one/media/person/97093/gallery-c447d0c15409.jpg) Bret Easton Ellis — André Müller, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2d/Bret_Easton_Ellis.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled) - ![Bret Easton Ellis In Conversation wirh Erica Wagner - Queen Elizabeth Hall - Thursday 2nd February 2023](https://film.one/media/person/97093/gallery-b3f55dcd1b82.jpg) Bret Easton Ellis In Conversation wirh Erica Wagner - Queen Elizabeth Hall - Thursday 2nd February 2023 — Raph_PH, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/60/BretEastonQEHall02023_%281_of_8%29_%2852665984710%29.jpg/1280px-BretEastonQEHall02023_%281_of_8%29_%2852665984710%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail) - ![Bret Easton Ellis In Conversation wirh Erica Wagner - Queen Elizabeth Hall - Thursday 2nd February 2023](https://film.one/media/person/97093/gallery-42b13dbfb989.jpg) Bret Easton Ellis In Conversation wirh Erica Wagner - Queen Elizabeth Hall - Thursday 2nd February 2023 — Raph_PH, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/09/BretEastonQEHall02023_%282_of_8%29_%2852665984690%29.jpg/1280px-BretEastonQEHall02023_%282_of_8%29_%2852665984690%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail) - ![Bret Easton Ellis In Conversation wirh Erica Wagner - Queen Elizabeth Hall - Thursday 2nd February 2023](https://film.one/media/person/97093/gallery-c961303b23a6.jpg) Bret Easton Ellis In Conversation wirh Erica Wagner - Queen Elizabeth Hall - Thursday 2nd February 2023 — Raph_PH, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9a/BretEastonQEHall02023_%283_of_8%29_%2852665984670%29.jpg/1280px-BretEastonQEHall02023_%283_of_8%29_%2852665984670%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail) - ![Bret Easton Ellis In Conversation wirh Erica Wagner - Queen Elizabeth Hall - Thursday 2nd February 2023](https://film.one/media/person/97093/gallery-2582f32cd7fc.jpg) Bret Easton Ellis In Conversation wirh Erica Wagner - Queen Elizabeth Hall - Thursday 2nd February 2023 — Raph_PH, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1f/BretEastonQEHall02023_%284_of_8%29_%2852665049532%29.jpg/1280px-BretEastonQEHall02023_%284_of_8%29_%2852665049532%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail) - ![Bret Easton Ellis In Conversation wirh Erica Wagner - Queen Elizabeth Hall - Thursday 2nd February 2023](https://film.one/media/person/97093/gallery-0df605da501a.jpg) Bret Easton Ellis In Conversation wirh Erica Wagner - Queen Elizabeth Hall - Thursday 2nd February 2023 — Raph_PH, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1f/BretEastonQEHall02023_%284_of_8%29_%2852665049532%29_%28cropped%29.jpg/1280px-BretEastonQEHall02023_%284_of_8%29_%2852665049532%29_%28cropped%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail) ## Awards ### Other awards — 0 won, 1 nominated - World Fantasy Award for Best Novel 2006: World Fantasy Award for Best Novel (nominated), for *Lunar Park* *From Wikidata, which records wins more completely than nominations.* --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/bret-easton-ellis