Berg was born in Norwalk, Connecticut. The son of Barbara Berg and film producer Dick Berg, young Scott was raised Jewish. When Scott was eight, his family relocated to Los Angeles, California. While a sophomore at Palisades Charter High School, Scott researched the author F. Scott Fitzgerald (a favorite of Barbara's, who named her son in part after Fitzgerald) for a report and "developed a mania" for his writing. Berg read all of Fitzgerald's works and later recalled: "It was the first time I saw the fusion of an artist and his life, a tragic and romantic life."[4] Scott applied to Princeton University, primarily because it was Fitzgerald's alma mater,[5] and was accepted in 1967. After graduating from Princeton in 1971 he formulated a career plan at this time, and later recalled: "I did tell myself early on: I think it would be interesting, perhaps, to spend a career writing a half-dozen biographies of twentieth-century American cultural figures—each one, as I often use as my metaphor, a different wedge of the great apple pie."
A. Scott Berg lives with his partner Kevin McCormick, a film producer, in Los Angeles.
