Rothko’s paintings colored dramatist’s ‘Red’

In person, Logan proved to be a warm, affable, and animated presence. Wearing a snug gray blazer on his lean frame, he spoke with a speedy precision. He’s an avid desert hiker, traveling every year to Death Valley by himself at the height of the summer, he said, “to scorch everything away. It cleanses the palate of my imagination. Writing is a hard job and it takes a lot out of you, so you need to take the time to replenish it.’’

Growing up in New Jersey, the son of Irish immigrant parents, Logan toiled in the Chicago theater scene for years after graduating from Northwestern. He eventually made his Hollywood breakthrough with the 1999 television drama “RKO 281’’ (about the making of “Citizen Kane’’) and the Oliver Stone-directed “Any Given Sunday,’’ which he had pitched to studios as “King Lear in the NFL.’’ Before long, he was a hot property.

At the moment, Logan appears to be in the midst of another career watershed. With press for “Hugo’’ wrapping up, he was flying back to the London set of the new James Bond film “Skyfall’’ (directed by Sam Mendes), for which he co-wrote the screenplay. All of this activity is a far cry from his days as a struggling playwright in the ’80s through early ’90s, when he paid the bills by shelving books at the Northwestern law library.

“Years go by where you just sit and write a play and look out the window,’’ he said, with a smile. “And now it’s like, I literally woke up this morning and thought, ‘All right, what am I talking about today? The French orphan [‘Hugo’], or the Roman general [‘Coriolanus’], or the American painter, or the British spy?’ ’’

“You could never plan any of this,’’ he added. “It’s just the kismet of the dice.’’

Despite being an unabashed theater geek (“I’m the most stage-struck person I know’’), Logan said he finds the same creative fulfillment writing film scripts as he does writing plays.

“I’m a dramatist, and I’ve never wanted to do anything else. So whether I’m doing that for two actors in a tiny rehearsal room for ‘Red’ or on a large scale with Marty Scorsese in ‘Hugo,’ it’s the same. Yes, they’re different in terms of scope, personal vision, and control. But in a way, those are superficial to me,’’ he said. “I was lucky and tenacious enough to find the thing I was born to do. And everything I could have imagined in my life is fulfilled in that one job description: dramatist.’’