• Attended Creighton Prep High School in Omaha, Nebraska
• Studied Spanish Philology at the University of Salamanca (Spain).
• Of Greek Ancestry. Family name was changed from Papadopoulos.
• Graduate of Stanford University.
• Graduated in 1990 from UCLA Filmschool with a MFA in Theater Arts.
• Payne grew up down the street from billionaire Warren Buffett.
• Owns the Winnebago driven by Warren Schmidt (Jack Nicholson) in About Schmidt (2002).
• Is on the short list of directors who has final cut rights to his films.
• Studied Spanish and history at Stanford.
• Did an uncredited polishing-up of the final draft of Meet the Parents (2000).
• Is a friend of David O. Russell.
• One of his motivations to move the title character of "About Schmidt" from New York City in the novel to Payne's hometown of Omaha, Nebraska was as a tribute to the great history of "creative" people that hail from that small Midwestern city. The famous people other than Payne who are originally from Omaha include Henry Fonda, Marlon Brando, Fred Astaire, Montgomery Clift, and Nick Nolte.

Director and screenwriter Alexander Payne made his big-screen debut directing one of nine vignettes about love and relationships in the 1992 film Inside Out. Four years later, he gained praise and recognition for Citizen Ruth, a bitingly satirical look at the abortion debate which starred Laura Dern as its amoral anti-heroine. In 1999, Payne wrote (with Jim Taylor) and directed Election. A wickedly funny look at American politics through the lens of a high school student council election, the film won rave reviews and further established Payne as one of the current cinema's most cutting directors and satirists. After writing Jurassic Park III, he teamed up with Taylor again for About Schmidt, based on the novel by Louis Begley. A comedy drama about Warren R. Schmidt (Jack Nicholson), a man in his sixties, About Schmidt received several award nominations and won a Golden Globe for Best Screenplay.