Everything about Michael Ovitz totally explained
Michael S. Ovitz (b.
December 14 1946,
Los Angeles, California) is a former talent agent and
Hollywood powerhouse who served as the head of the
Creative Artists Agency from
1975 to
1995.
After graduating from
UCLA with a degree in theater, film and television, Ovitz began his career at the
William Morris Agency, but left with four other agents in
1975 to found
Creative Artists Agency.
While at CAA, he was responsible for pioneering the practice of "packaging" writers, directors, and actors for motion pictures. This practice led to CAA and its clients holding significant negotiating leverage over the major studios. Various industry critics, such as entertainment-securities attorney John Cones in his recent book,
Hollywood Wars, maintain that the practice of packaging is an illegal tie-in prohibited by federal and state antitrust laws.
Ovitz is also well-known for negotiating
David Letterman's move from
NBC to
CBS, chronicled in the book
The Late Shift: Letterman, Leno, and the Network Battle for the Night by Bill Carter, as well as for discovering the action star
Steven Seagal.
He was also featured in the tell-all book "You'll Never Nanny in this Town Again" by Suzanne Hansen.
In 1995, he resigned from CAA to become president of the
Walt Disney Company under chairman
Michael Eisner. Sixteen months after taking office, he was dismissed by Disney's board of directors and received $38 million in cash and $100 million in stock as a severance package. This, along with the failure of his subsequent venture, the
Artist Management Group, led him to claim that his downfall had been engineered by a Hollywood
cabal he referred to as the "
gay mafia".
Today, Ovitz is a private investor who continues to informally advise the careers of luminaries such as
Martin Scorsese,
David Letterman and
Tom Clancy. He is also a passionate
basketball fan and art collector.
Further Information
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