The Life of David Gale is a 2003 crime thriller film directed and co-produced by Alan Parker, written by Charles Randolph, co-produced by Nicolas Cage, and starring Kevin Spacey as the title character, a college professor and longtime activist against capital punishment who is sentenced to death for killing a fellow capital punishment opponent; Kate Winslet, Laura Linney, and Gabriel Mann co-star. The film, an international co-production between the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom, was Parker's final film before his retirement, and subsequent death in 2020.

Sir Alan William Parker was an English film director, screenwriter and producer. His early career, beginning in his late teens, was spent as a copywriter and director of television advertisements. After about ten years of filming adverts, many of which won awards for creativity, he began screenwriting and directing films.