NEW YORK — If you want to get Tracy Letts in your movie – and that might be a good idea since he has two up for best picture at the Oscars – you’d better proofread the script before you send it.

Letts, who has supporting roles in “Lady Bird” and “The Post,” is also a Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning playwright and says he has abandoned new scripts after 20 pages if they torture the English language.

“If I get a script that has a lot of bad grammar, a lot of typos, then I think, ‘Well, they probably didn’t work real hard on making the script good,”‘ he said. “So that’s big for me.”

His instincts seem to have worked out marvelously over the past year, with two celebrated films, his play, “The Minutes,” about to land on Broadway, another play – “Mary Page Marlowe” – coming off-Broadway this summer, and a role in HBO’s “Divorce,” now in its second season.

“Look, I’m just real lucky. I had some great stuff land on my doorstep,” he said during a recent interview. “I’ve had so many great opportunities and I’m having the time of my life.”

His busy schedule is about to get magnified – and permanently: Letts and his wife, Carrie Coon, who is having her own breakout moment thanks to roles on “The Leftovers” and “Fargo,” are welcoming their first child this spring.

“People keep telling us our lives are going to change. I don’t believe ’em,” said Letts, displaying his dry sense of humor. “No way. No chance. How could it possibly change my life?”

Letts burst to worldwide fame when his “August: Osage County” won the Pulitzer and five Tonys, including the best-play trophy in 2008.


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