Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt (French pronunciation: [eʁik emanɥɛl ʃmit]; born 28 March 1960) is a Franco-Belgian playwright, short story writer and novelist, as well as a film director.

The "Classiques & Contemporains" edition of La Nuit de Valognes (Don Juan on Trial) claims that Schmitt depicts himself as a rebellious teenager who detested received wisdom and was sometimes prone to violent outbursts.

One day, his mother took him to the Théâtre des Célestins to see a performance of Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac starring Jean Marais.

After preparatory classes at the Lycée du Parc for France's elite universities, Schmitt passed the entrance exam to the École normale supérieure.

On the night of 4 February 1989, he became separated from his companions during an expedition to the Ahaggar Desert and, in the vast expanses of the Sahara, he underwent a spiritual experience that he characterized as nothing short of a divine revelation.

The next year, he produced another novel about a contentious historical figure: The Alternative Hypothesis (La Part de l'autre) is an alternate history in which the young Adolf Hitler is in 1908 accepted into the Academy of Fine Art in Vienna, setting him on the path to become a recognized painter; what follows changes the course of history for the entire world.

He then wrote a whimsical and satirical version of the Faust myth, When I was a Work of Art (Lorsque j'étais une oeuvre d'art – 2002).

Returning to the novel in 2008 with the publication of Ulysses from Baghdad, Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt again revealed his talent for being a "chameleon story-teller" (as described by Fabienne Pascaud in the magazine Télérama) in a tale about a man who undertakes a journey such as millions make in search of a safe place to go: the story of a stowaway.

A contemporary picaresque saga about the human condition, the novel ponders the question: are borders the stronghold of our identities or the last bastion of our illusions?

Odette Toulemonde (2007), a film about happiness starring Catherine Frot and Albert Dupontel, was followed by a screen adaptation of Oscar and the Lady in Pink (2009), with Michèle Laroque, Max von Sydow, Amira Casar and Mylène Demongeot in the lead roles.

In January 2012, Schmitt announced that he was taking over as director of the Théâtre Rive Gauche in association with the producer and actor, Bruno Metzger.

In 2016 Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt was unanimously elected by his peers member of the jury of the Prix Goncourt, he occupies Edmonde Charles-Roux's cover and published a detective novel about violence and the sacred, The Man Who Could See Through Faces (L'Homme qui voyait à travers les visages).

In the spring of 2017, he talked publicly about his childhood and adolescence in When I Grow Up, I'm Going to be a Child (Plus tard, je serai un enfant), a book of interviews produced by Catherine Lalanne.

In 2016, Schmitt was a commentator at the Rio Olympic Games alongside Patrick Montel, Alexandre Boyon, Stéphane Diagana and Nelson Monfort on France Télévisions.