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Tracy Letts was born on July 4, 1965, in Tulsa, OK. His parents are author Billie Letts and college professor and actor Dennis Letts. He has two brothers, Shawn, a musician, and Dana. -
Tracy Letts wrote his first story when he was six years old in first grade. The story was called “The Psychopath.” It was about a man who hung himself while shooting himself in the head.
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In 1975, his maternal grandfather committed suicide when Letts was 10 years old. His grandmother was also dealing with drug addiction.
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Letts was raised in Durant, Oklahoma and graduated from Durant High School in the early 1980s.
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He moved to Dallas at 18 years old where he waited tables and worked in telemarketing while beginning his acting career.
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Letts moved to Chicago at the age of 20, working for the next 11 years at Steppenwolf Theatre Company and Famous Door.
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Letts acted in TV shows including Prison Break, The District, Strong Medicine, Profiler, Judging Amy, The Drew Carey Show, Seinfeld, Early Edition, and Home Improvement.
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Letts wrote the play Killer Joe which is about a Texas family that enlists the titular murderer-for-hire to kill a relative with a sizable life insurance policy. The script was so graphic and violent, however, that no theatre company would agree to produce it. Two years later, the play premiered at the Next Lab Theater in Evanston, Illinois. Since then, Killer Joe has been performed in a number of countries in 12 languages. -
Letts acted in many of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company's productions, starring in Steve Martin's Picasso at the Lapin Agile in 1994.
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Tracy Letts wrote Bug, a love story about a woman who is a cocaine addict and a man who thinks his body is infested with insects. It premiered in London in 1996 and later ran in New York. -
In 2003 Steppenwolf staged Letts’s next play, Man From Nebraska, which is about a man's loss of faith and his journey to regain it. This was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. -
August: Osage County was a black comedy depicting a wildly dysfunctional Oklahoma family coping with the death of its patriarch. Tracy Letts received a Pulitzer Prize for this and five Tony Awards, including for best play. -
Tracy Lets received a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for his portrayal of George in the revival of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in 2013. -
He married actress Carrie Coon in September 2013. -
Letts joined the cast of Showtime's Homeland as US Senator Andrew Lockhart in 2013. He was nominated with the rest of the cast for the Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Ensemble. -
Letts appeared in the 2017 films The Lovers, The Post, and Lady Bird. -
In 2018, Tracy Letts and Carrie Coon had their first child together.
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In 2019, Letts appeared in the Broadway revival of Arthur Miller's All My Sons at Roundabout Theatre Company's American Airlines Theatre. -
In 2019, Letts portrayed Henry Ford II in James Mangold's sports drama film Ford v Ferrari, and played Mr. Dashwood in Little Women. -
In 2021, Tracy Letts had his second child with Carrie Coon.
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He wrote the screenplay for the 2021 Netflix feature film The Woman in the Window. -
Letts’ play The Minutes made its return to Broadway in March 2022. -