Born in Durham, North Carolina on October 26, 1954, Brantley received a Bachelor of Arts in English from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, graduating in 1977, and is a member of Phi Beta Kappa society.
[1] For the next 18 months, Brantley freelanced, writing regularly for Elle, Vanity Fair, and The New Yorker before joining The New York Times as a Drama Critic (August 1993).
"[6] After a review of a 2014 production of Of Mice and Men, lead actor James Franco posted a later-deleted screed on Instagram calling Brantley a "little bitch.
"[8][9] In June 2017, Pulitzer Prize winning playwrights Lynn Nottage and Paula Vogel publicly criticized Brantley on Twitter following his lukewarm reviews of their respective Broadway debuts.
[14][15] The Times subsequently edited the review and Brantley issued an apology, writing that he had tried to "reflect the light tone of the show", but his remarks instead came off as "more flippant than I would have ever intended".