Summary: He is an American screenwriter, director, producer, and songwriter who came to prominence by writing the screenplay for the 1995 film "Braveheart". He earned an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay and a Writers Guild of America award for Best Screenplay Adapted Directly for the Screen for this film. He has also directed "The Man in the Iron Mask", "Pearl Harbor", "We Were Soldiers", and "Secretariat". He is also the New York Times bestselling author of seven novels and the lyricist of the acclaimed hymn "Mansions of the Lord" which was performed as the closing music for President Ronald Reagan's national funeral. He is currently working alongside Bishop T.D. Jakes to produce the family drama, "Heaven Is for Real". <br><br> He says of his faith, "I grew up in a Christian home in Tennessee. My mother and father, along with my grandparents and my Aunt Betty, founded a church in the front room of their farmhouse, and that church is thriving even now. We went to church at least ten hours every week—Sunday mornings, Sunday evenings, Wednesday night prayer meetings, Sunday school, Training Union, choir practice. During revivals those hours doubled. The amount of preaching I heard in those days seemed endless, but what affected me most in those services was the Bible itself, and the hymns. Baptists are big on both. The person who most embodied God's love to me was my Grandmother Page. Everyone who ever knew her recognized that she heard the voices of the angels. When I was small and suffered from asthma, she would hold me in her lap all night long and sing to me. When we went to tent revivals and sang "The Old Rugged Cross" together, and I saw tears rolling down her face, I knew I might never have the purity of her soul, but I would always cling to that cross." <br><br> He further says, "I am a Christian, no matter what else I do. I could change my name to something else, but I would not become someone else. My Christian identity doesn't depend on my earning the title; the start of my journey as a Christian is my certainty that I don't merit the love of God and I have it anyway—just as I am, without one plea." Often crediting his Christian faith as an influence on his approach to filmmaking, he said, "If we call a man a Christian doctor, deep sea diver, or dogcatcher, we'd expect that he did his work the best he could, maybe even with special care for excellence. When we ask if someone is a Christian writer/director, we might become suspicious that he was trying to spread not simply the love God has given him, but his own theories about God and that love. I studied theology; I have many theories. But I believe in none of them. I believe that the death of Jesus of Nazareth opened a door to love and life that are, quite literally, a union with God. I don't understand it, but Jesus didn't ask for my understanding. He just said "Follow me," gave up his life, and rose from the dead. So I try to follow. I'm not trying to spread my dogma. I'm trying to live my experience that God loves me, and the only way I can follow is by loving others." His name is Randall Wallace.
