Lawrence Bender (born October 17, 1957) is an American film producer. Throughout his career, Bender-produced films have received 36 Academy Award nominations, resulting in eight wins.
Bender rose to fame by producing Reservoir Dogs in 1992 and has since produced several of Quentin Tarantino's films including Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill: Volume 1 & 2 and Inglourious Basterds. Bender has also produced three documentary films, most notably An Inconvenient Truth (2006) which won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. He has received three Best Picture nominations for producing Pulp Fiction, Good Will Hunting and Inglourious Basterds.
Bender was born to a Jewish family in The Bronx, New York, and grew up in New Jersey, where his father was a college history professor and his mother was a kindergarten teacher. He described his hometown of Cherry Hill as "all-white and anti-Semitic". In high school, he decided to pursue a career as a civil engineer. His grandfather had been a civil engineer and he heard there were good jobs available in the field. He is a graduate of The University of Maine, Class of 1979, majoring in Civil Engineering.