Born Elizabeth Becker Henley in Jackson, MS; the daughter of an attorney and an actress. Early on she dreamed of becoming an actress, and to that end she earned a B.F.A. at Southern Methodist University in 1974. While at SMU, she wrote her first play, the one-act Am I Blue, which was produced at SMU's Margo Jones Theatre in 1973. In 1976, she moved to Los Angeles to live with actor/director Stephen Tobolowsky, with whom she would later collaborate on the screenplay TRUE STORIES (1986). After Crimes of the Heart won its initial award and was staged in 1979 by the Actors Theatre in Louisville, it debuted on Broadway at the John Golden Theatre 4 November 1981, and won the 1981 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Though some critics faulted the play because of its black humor and what they felt were stereotyped southern traits, others saw great value in the play, comparing her comic sense and empathetic treatments of her characters with such other writers as Flannery O'Connor and Eudora Welty. The 1986 movie version, for which Henley wrote the screenplay, starred Diane Keaton, Jessica Lange, and Sissy Spacek as the three sisters, with additional performances by Tess Harper and actor/playwright Sam Shepard. Henley followed the success of Crimes of the Heart with The Miss Firecracker Contest, in which a socially outcast woman, Carnell Scott, wishes to improve her standing in her small southern town and decides the best way to do so would be to win the "Miss Firecracker" beauty contest. First produced onstage in Los Angeles in 1980, the play would likewise be adapted into a Hollywood film with a screenplay by Henley. Other plays by Henley include The Wake of Jamey Foster, produced first in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1982 and later that year on Broadway; The Debutante Ball, first produced in Costa Mesa, California, in 1985; The Lucky Spot (1987); and Abundance (1989). More recent plays include Signature, Control Freaks, and L-Play. Her most recent play, Impossible Marriage, debuted off-Broadway in 1998. Written while Henley was pregnant with her first child, the play is set in Savannah, GA, and tells of a young bride named Pandora whose upcoming wedding is opposed by nearly every other character, including her older, very pregnant sister, Floral, played in the 1998 production by actress Holly Hunter, who had appeared onstage (and in the film MISS FIRECRACKER) in six previous Henley plays. In addition to play-writing, Henley has written several television and movie screenplays, including "Survival Guides" with Budge Threlkeld for PBS (1985), the film NOBODY'S FOOL (1986), and TRUE STORIES, on which she collaborated with Steven Trobolowsky and David Byrne, the lead singer of the rock group Talking Heads who directed and starred in the film. Henley lives in California with her son, Patrick.  Nominated for Writing (Best Screenplay based on material from another medium) 1986: CRIMES OF THE HEART 1 nomination