Charles Stuart Kaufman (; born November 19, 1958) is an American filmmaker and novelist. His work is distinguished by postmodernist and surrealist storytelling, with many critics considering him an auteur. Getting his start as a television writer, Kaufman gained prominence for his collaborations with directors Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry on Being John Malkovich (1999), Adaptation (2002), and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), before going on to direct films himself with Synecdoche, New York (2008), Anomalisa (2015), and I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020). In 2020, he released a novel, Antkind. Wikipedia