Biography

He is the brother of Mark Attanasio, the owner of the Milwaukee Brewers.

Father of actress Annabelle Attanasio.

Paul Attanasio has been one of the most successful and most sought after script doctors in Hollywood since the early 1990's. He has done uncredited script doctor work on Rapid Fire (1992), Speed (1994), Air Force One (1997), Armageddon (1998), Patch Adams (1998), Town & Country (2001), Poseidon (2006), The Bourne Ultimatum (2007), among many others. He has also performed rewrites on scripts without credit including writing drafts for Beyond the Sea (2004), Leatherheads (2008), The Wolfman (2010) and the Oscar nominated screenplay for The Fighter (2010).

In the fall of 1998, Paul Attanasio was hired to adapt the yet-to-be-published A. Scott Berg biography "Lindbergh" for Steven Spielberg to produce and direct as his follow-up to Saving Private Ryan (1998). However, by the fall of 1999 it was announced that Attanasio had dropped out of the project without penning a draft. According to reports, Attanasio wrote a treatment that presented Lindbergh as a tortured hero with a complicated marriage and a nasty anti-Semitic streak. Spielberg didn't approve, opting for a more heroic tale of the famed aviator. DreamWorks demanded that Attanasio return his up front fee, something that is practically unheard of in Hollywood. The amount in question was about $500,000. Attanasio gave a chunk of it back and was replaced by screenwriter Menno Meyjes, who had previously worked with Spielberg on The Color Purple (1985) and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989). The project was eventually shelved after Spielberg decided to pass on it, when Meyjes was unable to deliver a solid script.

Film critic for the Washington Post from 1984 to 1987.