Taylor Sheridan

Taylor Sheridan is an American screenwriter, director, actor, and producer whose work often examines power, violence, land, and institutional failure in the modern American West. He was born on May 21, 1970, in Cranfills Gap, Texas, and initially became known as an actor. Television audiences saw him as Deputy Chief David Hale on FX’s “Sons of Anarchy” and as Danny Boyd on Veronica Mars. He later redirected his career toward writing and filmmaking.

Sheridan wrote “Sicario,” the 2015 crime thriller directed by Denis Villeneuve. The film follows FBI agent Kate Macer, played by Emily Blunt, as she joins a task force targeting a Mexican drug cartel and discovers that the operation’s rules are deliberately blurred. Sheridan also wrote “Hell or High Water,” directed by David Mackenzie. That 2016 film follows two Texas brothers, played by Chris Pine and Ben Foster, who rob branches of the bank threatening to foreclose on their family ranch, while a retiring Texas Ranger, portrayed by Jeff Bridges, pursues them. The screenplay earned Sheridan an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay.

His directorial debut was “Wind River,” released in 2017. Sheridan wrote and directed the mystery, set on Wyoming’s Wind River Reservation, where tracker Cory Lambert, played by Jeremy Renner, helps FBI agent Jane Banner, portrayed by Elizabeth Olsen, investigate the death of a young Indigenous woman. The film focuses on jurisdictional limits, isolation, and violence against Native women.

Sheridan created “Yellowstone,” which premiered on Paramount Network in 2018. The series stars Kevin Costner as John Dutton, owner of Montana’s largest cattle ranch, whose family battles developers, a Native nation, and political rivals over control of land surrounding the ranch. Sheridan co-created the show with John Linson and writes or oversees much of its expanding universe.

That universe includes the prequel “1883,” starring Sam Elliott, Tim McGraw, and Faith Hill, and “1923,” starring Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren. Sheridan also created “Mayor of Kingstown,” set in a Michigan company town dominated by the prison industry, and “Tulsa King,” which stars Sylvester Stallone as a New York mobster exiled to Oklahoma. In “Special Ops: Lioness,” Sheridan turned toward espionage, portraying the psychological and operational pressures faced by CIA personnel and their military partners.

His recurring themes connect disparate settings: characters inherit systems they did not create, then decide whether survival requires preserving or destroying them. Through stories rooted in specific regions and conflicts, Sheridan has become one of television’s most influential contemporary dramatists.