James Duff

Biography: A highly articulate TV writer-producer, Duff started out as a playwright. Ironically, his 1984 Broadway debut, the family drama Home Front, was dismissed by the New York Times as too "television." Although the play closed quickly, with some retooling and a new title, The War at Home, it went on to have a successful worldwide run and was turned into a 1996 movie. Duff earned an Emmy nod for his very first teleplay, another dysfunctional-family saga called Doing Time on Maple Drive. And while he made a brief foray into comedy as the supervising writer on the cult series Popular, he remained dramatic at heart, penning a number of TV-movies and failed pilots. His ability to craft fascinating but flawed characters finally paid off in 2005 when he created The Closer, a highly successful crime series about a mess of a master interrogator.