Since he could hold a pencil Jonny drew comics and he didn’t stop until he went to art college to study graphic design, originally at Parsons in New York and then at St Martins in London.
By graduation Jonny knew he wanted a career in film and television and in 1985 he landed his first job working on a series for Channel 4. Over a varied 15 year career that went from tea boy to Producer, he worked on everything from contemporary dance programmes to wine documentaries, from dog food commercials to television drama and feature films. He worked with a number of leading directors including Lindsay Anderson, Peter Cattaneo and Anthony Minghella, as well as lecturing at the National Film & Television School and The Royal College of Art.
Then one day he picked up a pencil again, but instead of drawing he started to write screenplays. Suddenly, everything made sense; Jonny was back telling stories with pictures. With hindsight, he realised all the bits in between had been a detour.
In 2000 Jonny became a full-time screenwriter and in 2003 he moved from London to an isolated house on the edge of Dartmoor, where he now lives with his partner, two small children, four noisy Jack Russells, two high maintenance ponies, a tank of tropical fish and a tractor.
In addition to his screenplays, Jonny was a series writer on the 13×25′ children’s drama Heirs Of The Night for Hamster Films/Bavaria Films. He has written on the last five series of M I High as well as Wolfblood and The Sparticle Mystery for CBBC. He has recently written a development script of Skeletons for Wall to Wall Media.
Jonny Kurzman is represented by Frances Arnold