Roger Roberts Avary was born in Flin Flon, Manitoba, the son of a mining engineer. Art Center College of Design.
In the early 1980s he moved to Manhattan Beach, California. From around 1986 he was reduced to working in a video store, a co-worker was Quentin Tarantino. He did writing work on Reservoir Dogs (1992), True Romance (1993) and Pulp Fiction (1994) with Tarantino, he also wrote and directing Killing Zoe (1994) with Tarantino as producer. He then moved into work for television and made two unsuccessful pilot episodes. He returned to cinema, writing the screenplay for the Bret Easton Ellis novel The Rules of Attraction (2002), he was also the director and executive producer.