Robert Douglas Benton (born September 29, 1932) is an American screenwriter and film director. A seven-time Academy Award nominee and three-time winner, he is best known as the writer and director of the film Kramer vs. Kramer, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Director and the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. He later won a third Academy Award in the category of Best Original Screenplay for Places in the Heart (1984). His first script as a writer was written with David Newman for the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde.

Benton was born in Waxahachie, Texas, the son of Dorothy (née Spaulding) and Ellery Douglass Benton, a telephone company employee.^[1] He attended the University of Texas and Columbia University.^[1]

In 1959, he co-wrote the book The IN and OUT Book with Harvey Schmidt, published by The Viking Press. He was the art director at Esquire in the early 1960s.^[2]

Benton won the Academy Awards for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Director for Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) and Best Original Screenplay for Places in the Heart (1984).

Benton garnered three additional Oscar nominations: two for Best Original Screenplay for both Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and The Late Show (1977) and one for Best Adapted Screenplay for Nobody's Fool (1994).

He also directed Twilight (1998) and Feast of Love (2007), and co-wrote the screenplays for Superman (1978) and The Ice Harvest (2005).

In 2006, he appeared in the documentary Wanderlust.

He married artist Sallie Rendig in 1964.^[3][4]

Producer

• A Texas Romance, 1909^[5] (1964) (Short film)