Michael Blake Biography

Fast Facts

• Received several public service awards for his various philanthropic efforts, including the Eleanor Roosevelt Award and the Animal Protection Institute's Humanitarian of the Year Award
• Dances With Wolves was the first Western film to win the best picture Oscar since 1931's "Cimarron․"
• Won the Writers Guild of America Award for best adapted screenplay for "Dances With Wolves" in 1991
• Attended the University of New Mexico, but left in his senior year to move to California, where he took film classes at Berkeley
• Started out as a writer for the alternative newspaper Free Press
• His first film was 1983's "Stacey's Knights," which was produced by Jim Wilson, a friend from Berkeley, and starred a then-unknown Kevin Costner, who encouraged him to write "Dances With Wolves" as a novel instead of a screenplay
• Quote: "[on funding "Dances With Wolves"] "This story is so American we had to go to Europe to get the initial money․""
• His other works included "Marching to Valhalla," a sequel to "Dances With Wolves" called "The Holy Road" and an autobiography called "Like a Running Dog․"
• Best known as an author and screenwriter who wrote the award-winning film "Dances With Wolves․"
• When it was first published as a paperback novel in 1988, "Dances With Wolves" earned him only $6,500; at the time of his death, it had sold more than 3․5 million copies in 22 different languages