Roberto Gaston Orci was born in Mexico City, Mexico, to Roberto Orci Sr. and Macuqui Robau-Garcia, one of four siblings. His family relocated to Texas when he was eleven years old and eventually settled in Los Angeles. Orci attended Crossroads School for Arts and Sciences in Santa Monica, where he met and befriended his future producing and writing collaborator, Alex Kurtzman, a fellow film enthusiast.
After further film studies at the University of Texas in Austin, Orci began his career in the late 1990s as a screenwriter and co-executive producer on episodes of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess. He worked as a writer, executive producer, and executive story editor on the J.J. Abrams spy series Alias prior to his long-standing creative partnership with Kurtzman on several big-budget franchises, including Transformers, Mission Impossible, and the Star Trek movie reboots, Star Trek, Star Trek Into Darkness, and Star Trek Beyond.
In developing the relationship between the young emotional Kirk and the young logical Spock, Orci later explained, "We didn't even realize we were writing about ourselves until we were halfway through the script. That was a little embarrassing." Introduced to science fiction by an uncle during childhood, Orci remained firmly invested in the genre. He was a co-creator, writer, and executive producer of Fox's excellent sci-fi series Fringe and later served in the same capacities on the supernatural fantasy series Sleepy Hollow.
According to his 2013 interview regarding Sleepy Hollow, Orci stated, "...we like rich mythologies and we like things to build, and we like the characters to have an emotional memory, but we are also dealing with a treasured short story. Some of the elements are familiar to audiences and allow us to anchor the show in something that audiences may already know about, so it's potentially easier to follow without necessarily being less rich or less dense." Orci's last credited work was developing for television, alongside Kurtzman and Peter M. Lenkov, the reboot of Hawaii Five-0.
Latterly, Orci struggled with alcoholism, was repeatedly hospitalized, and underwent rehabilitation several times. He passed away in Los Angeles on February 25, 2025, at the age of 51, due to kidney disease.
