The Brooklyn-born son of therapist Tev Goldsman and noted child psychologist Mira Rothenberg, screenwriter Akiva Goldsman began writing as a teenager, submitting stories to The New Yorker and other publications. Although his efforts were met with rejection slips, he continued an interest in creative projects while attending Wesleyan University and later NYU's masters program in creative writing. Goldsman founded a consulting firm to assist mental health workers in creating comprehensive treatments for their patients. All the while he continued to churn out stories and scripts. "Silent Fall" (1994), a fact-based screenplay about a psychologist aiding a criminal investigation in which a key witness is an autistic boy, served as a calling card, although the finished movie with Richard Dreyfuss didn't set any box-office records. It was enough, though, to land the writer the opportunity to adapt John Grisham's best-seller "The Client" (also 1994), replacing writer Robert Getchell. That film, which provided a strong lead role for Susan Sarandon, who earned an Oscar nomination, and a star-making one for young Brad Renfro, marked the start of a fruitful collaboration with director Joel Schumacher. In 1995, Goldsman did rewrites on "Batman Forever", the third installment in the franchise which attempted to inject some levity. Still, many felt it was inferior to the first two Tim Burton-directed films. A second Grisham adaptation, "A Time to Kill" (1996), was better received by critics and audiences who responded positively to its plot involving murder and race relations in Mississippi. The Schumacher-Goldsman juggernaut moved on with "Batman & Robin" (1997), the confusing, excessively overproduced fifth entry in the series. Most critics agreed that the script (with lame jokes and bad dialogue along the lines of "The iceman cometh" spouted by Arnold Schwarzenegger's Mr. Freeze) and the direction were veering too close to the campy qualities the 1960s TV series embraced. Perhaps significantly, the film marked the end (to date) of the collaboration between writer and director.

Goldsman next turned his attention to another 60s TV camp classic, "Lost in Space" (1998), but rather than embrace that aspect, the scripter adopted a serious tone that seemed out of place. (Roger Ebert opined "'Lost in Space' is one of those typing-speed jobs where the screenwriter is like a stenographer, rewriting what he's seen at the movies."). The movie opened well but soon fell off, grossing just over half of its estimated $126.5 million budget in the USA. That same year, Goldsman was one of three credited writers (along with Robin Swicord and Adam Brooks) who adapted Alice Hoffman's novel "Practical Magic" into a vehicle for Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman. Perhaps because the screenplay went through several writers, the resulting film lacked a strong point of view and left many feeling that the quirky charm and inherent comedy in the novel was somehow missed.

After being credited as a producer on "Deep Blue Sea" (1999), Goldsman remained busy dividing his time between developing projects through his production company Weed Road Pictures and accepting screenwriting jobs. He was the first writer to take a crack at adapting Tom Clancy's novel "The Sum of All Fears" but by the time the project went before the cameras with Ben Affleck in the lead, Goldsman's contributions were no longer worthy of screen credit. Similarly, he worked on adapting Arthur Golden's novel "Memoirs of a Geisha" for director Steven Spielberg, but when the filmmaker opted to concentrate on 2001's "A.I. Artificial Intelligence", others reworked his script. (Goldsman did return to the project in 2002, however.) Instead, his one produced screenplay was "A Beautiful Mind" (2001), loosely based on the life of Nobel laureate John Forbes Nash Jr. who battled schizophrenia. Goldsman's parents had operated one of the first group homes for disturbed children in his formative years, and the writer was able to draw on first-hand observations in preparing his drafts of "A Beautiful Mind". While the finished film drew some criticism for what it omitted, the scripter defended his approach by claiming it was "a movie of the architecture of a man's life, not a recording of the facts." In any case, the completed film earned stellar reviews and earned the author his first ever accolades, including a Golden Globe, a Writers Guild of America Award as well as an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.