Danny Strong

Danny Strong is an American actor, film and television writer, director, and producer. As an actor, Strong is best known for his roles as Jonathan Levinson in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Doyle McMaster in Gilmore Girls. He also wrote the screenplays for Recount, the HBO adaptation Game Change, Lee Daniels' The Butler, and co-wrote the two-part finale of The Hunger Games film trilogy, Mockingjay – Part 1 and Mockingjay – Part 2. Strong also is a co-creator, executive producer, director, and writer for the Fox series Empire and created, wrote and directed the award-winning Hulu miniseries Dopesick. Strong has won two Emmy Awards, two Writers Guild of America Awards, a Producers Guild of America Award, two Peabody Awards and an NAACP Image Award. Early life Strong grew up in a Jewish family of Lithuanian, Russian, and Polish origin. He began acting at a young age. As a child, Strong rented videos from Video Archives and became friends with Quentin Tarantino, who worked there as a clerk. "I would just literally sit and chat with him for 45 minutes, an hour at a time about movies, and he got me turned on to all these different movies that 10-year-olds don't see." By the time he was 10, Strong became more infatuated with the world of film and was sending his photo to agents. Strong attended Mira Costa High School, and then studied film and theatre at the University of Southern California.