Taylor Sheridan was born in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and raised in Fort Worth, Texas. He attended Southwest Texas State University, where he later dropped out and moved around a bit before landing in Los Angeles. He spent over a decade as a working actor, appearing in Veronica Mars and Sons of Anarchy, before reinventing himself as a screenwriter in his early 40s.

His debut screenplay, Sicario (2015), catapulted him to Hollywood’s A-list. The follow-up, Hell or High Water (2016), earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay and cemented his reputation for gritty, character-driven storytelling rooted in the American West. He also wrote and directed Wind River (2017), which won the Best Director prize in the Un Certain Regard section at the Cannes Film Festival.

Sheridan’s greatest success came with television. In 2018, he co-created Yellowstone, which grew into one of the most-watched shows in cable history and spawned a sprawling franchise including 1883, 1923, Mayor of Kingstown, Tulsa King, Special Ops: Lioness, and Landman. In 2025, he served as executive producer and on-air personality on CBS’s The Road. That same year, he signed a landmark deal with NBCUniversal worth over $1 billion for future film and television projects.