Profile · Mequon, Wisconsin
John Ridley IV
Oscar-winning screenwriter (12 Years a Slave); raised in Mequon from age seven
$8 million
John Ridley IV won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for 12 Years a Slave in 2014—the second Black writer to take that Oscar, after Geoffrey Fletcher. Before Hollywood, he was a Mequon kid on a bike. Born on 18th Street in Milwaukee on October 1, 1964, the middle of three children, he moved with his family to a Mequon subdivision at age seven. His father, John, practiced ophthalmology in Milwaukee for more than thirty years; his mother, Terry, taught special education for Milwaukee Public Schools. At Homestead High School, class of 1982, Ridley ran cross-country and performed in school musicals. He attended Indiana University, then earned an NYU degree in East Asian languages he never used for a job, tried stand-up (Letterman, Carson), and moved to Los Angeles in 1990. Television writing on Martin, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and The John Larroquette Show led to fiction. Spoils of War sold in eighteen days and became the story credit on Three Kings. After the Oscar he created the anthology series American Crime. The California visits continue, but the Mequon subdivision remains the hometown he cites.