Early Life
Kelley was born in Waterville, Maine, raised in Belmont, Massachusetts and attended the Belmont Hill School. He is the son of legendary Boston University Terriers and New England Whalers hockey coach Jack Kelley and played the game himself. Kelley was a stick boy for the Whalers during his father's time as coach and the captain of the hockey team at Princeton University, from which he graduated in 1979 with a degree in politics.
Demonstrating early on a creative and quirky bent, in his junior year at Princeton, Kelley submitted a paper for a political science class about John F Kennedy's plot to kill Fidel Castro, written as a poem. For his senior thesis he turned the Bill of Rights into a play. "I made each amendment into a character", he said. "The First Amendment is a loudmouth guy who won't shut up. The Second Amendment guy, all he wanted to talk about was his gun collection. Then the 10th Amendment, the one where they say leave the rest for the states to decide, he was a guy with no self-esteem." Also while at Princeton, he was a member of the Princeton Triangle Club.
He received his Juris Doctor (J.D.) from Boston University School of Law where he wrote for the Legal Follies, a sketch comedy group composed of Boston University law students which still holds annual performances. He began working for a Boston law firm, mostly dealing with real estate and minor criminal cases. In 1983, while considering it only a hobby, Kelley began writing a screenplay, a legal thriller, which was optioned in 1986 and later became the Judd Nelson feature film From the Hip in 1987.
Read more about this topic: David E. Kelley
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“[In early adolescence] she becomes acutely aware of herself as a being perceived by others, judged by others, though she herself is the harshest judge, quick to list her physical flaws, quick to undervalue and under-rate herself not only in terms of physical appearance but across a wide range of talents, capacities and even social status, whereas boys of the same age will cite their abilities, their talents and their social status pretty accurately.”
—Terri Apter (20th century)
“The Troubles are a pigmentation in our lives here, a constant irritation that detracts from real life. But life has to do with something else as well, and it’s the other things which are the more permanent and real.”
—Brian Friel (b. 1929)