Graham Yost

Highest Rated: 94% Speed (1994)

Lowest Rated: 24% Mission to Mars (2000)

Birthday: Sep 5, 1959

Birthplace: Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Graham Yost was a Canadian-American writer, producer, and occasional director and actor with a broad range of high-profile credits across film and television. For most of his career he was most well known as a writer, with major Hollywood hits like "Speed" (1994), "Broken Arrow" (1996), and "Hard Rain" (1998) on his resume. He then gravitated towards television work, as a writer and executive producer on big-budget, critically-acclaimed shows including World War II drama "The Pacific" (HBO 2010), Elmore Leonard revenge drama "Justified" (FX 2010-15), alien-invasion drama "Falling Skies" (TNT 2011- ) and Cold War spy drama "The Americans" (FX 2013- ). Born in Etobicoke, Ontario, Yost was the son of popular Canadian broadcaster Elwy Yost. He started out as a writer on shows like children's cowboy caper "Hey Dude" (Nickelodeon, 1989-1991) and high-concept sitcom "Herman's Head" (Fox 1991-94) before his script for an action thriller called "Speed" turned into an enormous hit. Along with his big-screen work, Yost returned to TV as the supervising producer and writer (and also director, for one episode) of the Ron Howard-produced miniseries "From the Earth to the Moon" (HBO 1998). Yost then wound down his film career following the hit "Mission To Mars" (2000), creating the ambitious procedural crime drama "Boomtown" (NBC 2002-03) and the quirky detective comedy-drama "Raines" (NBC 2007). Those shows did not last, but the critical success of Yost's "Justified" established him as a successful cable writer-producer.