A former documentarian who became a hot screenwriter during the 1990s, William Nicholson is best known for "Shadowlands", his version of the romance between the writers C.S. Lewis and Joy Gresham. First made as a British TV drama in 1985, "Shadowlands" was subsequently the basis for both a stage play (1989), starring Nigel Hawthorne, and a 1993 feature film starring Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger. For the latter, the screenwriter earned an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Soon after graduating from Cambridge, Nicholson began working as a trainee at the BBC. By the mid-70s, he had begun making documentaries and over a ten-year period created over 40 for the BBC. In addition, Nicholson served as executive producer on the series "Global Report", "Everyman" and "Lovelaw." He was particularly honored for his original drama, "Sweet As You Are", about a heterosexual couple whose happiness is sent awry when one is discovered to have contracted AIDS. (The drama received a theatrical release in the USA in 1988). Nicholson also scripted "Double Helix/Life Force" (1987), which traced the story of the researchers who identified DNA, and "The March" (1991), a futuristic story of people from an African refugee camp who decide to scout Europe for food. He made his US debut with the teleplay for "A Private Matter" (HBO, 1992), an original film starring Sissy Spacek in the true story of a children's show host who created an uproar when she traveled to Sweden to have an abortion. Nicholson earned an Emmy nomination for his take on the Lindbergh baby kidnapping trial in the HBO original movie "Crime of the Century" (1996).
For the big screen, Nicholson scripted "New World" (1986) and "The Vision" (1987), about evangelists running a satellite TV network, but neither found an international audience. His first modest success was as co-adapter of "Sarafina!" (1992), the South African stage musical about teenagers protesting apartheid. Nicholson was tapped to polish Mark Handley's script for "Nell" (1994), which found Jodie Foster playing a rural woman raised in isolation who developed a language all her own. In 1995, Nicholson wrote "First Knight", a retelling of the King Arthur-Guinevere-Sir Lancelot triangle with a more mature appraisal that suffered from the miscasting of its leads. He stepped behind the camera to make his feature directing debut with "Firelight" (1998), from his own script.