Editing Bret Easton Ellis (section)

==Early life and education==
Ellis was born in [[Los Angeles]] in 1964, and raised in [[Sherman Oaks]] in the [[San Fernando Valley]]. His father, Robert Martin Ellis, was a property developer, and his mother, Dale Ellis (née Dennis), was a homemaker.<ref>{{cite book|title=World authors 1990–1995|editor-last=Thompson|editor-first=Clifford|publisher=[[H. W. Wilson Company|H.W. Wilson]]|year=1999|isbn=978-0-8242-0956-8|page=215|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cWoYAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA215}}</ref> They divorced in 1982. During the initial release of his third novel, ''American Psycho'', Ellis said that his father was abusive and was the basis of the book's best-known character, [[Patrick Bateman]]. Later Ellis said the character was not in fact based on his father, but on Ellis himself, saying that all of his work came from a specific place of pain he was going through in his life during the writing of each of his books. Ellis says that while his family life growing up was somewhat difficult due to the divorce, he mostly had an "idyllic" California childhood.<ref name="podcastone.com">{{cite web|author=PodcastOne |url=http://podcastone.com/Bret-Easton-Ellis-Podcast |title=Bret Easton Ellis Podcast |publisher=Podcastone.com |access-date=June 29, 2014}}</ref>

Ellis graduated from [[Buckley School (California)|The Buckley School]] in [[Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles|Sherman Oaks]] section of Los Angeles. He then attended [[Bennington College]] in [[Bennington, Vermont]], where he studied music and then gradually gravitated to writing, which had been one of his passions since childhood. At Bennington College, he met and befriended [[Donna Tartt]] and [[Jonathan Lethem]], who both later became published writers. At Bennington College, he also completed his first novel, ''Less than Zero'', which was published while Ellis was 21 and still in college.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.vogue.com/article/bret-easton-ellis-white-interview|title=Bret Easton Ellis on Talking Porn With Kanye, a New Novel, and (Yes) Trump|website=Vogue|date=April 16, 2019 |language=en|access-date=September 8, 2019}}</ref>