Melissa Marie Mathison (June 3, 1950 – November 4, 2015) was an American film and television screenwriter and an activist for the Tibetan independence movement. She was best known for writing the screenplays for the films
The Black Stallion (1979) and
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), the latter of which earned her the Saturn Award for Best Writing and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. Mathison later wrote
The Indian in the Cupboard (1995), based on Lynne Reid Banks's 1980 children's novel of the same name, and
Kundun (1997), a biographical-drama film about the Dalai Lama. Her final film credit was
The BFG (2016), which marked her third collaboration with film director Steven
Spielberg.
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