Michael S Ovitz

Ovitz’s journey to Hollywood mega-agent never strayed too far from California. He graduated from U.C.L.A., worked as a part-time tour guide at Universal Studios and rose from the mailroom at the William Morris Agency to become a junior agent. He and several colleagues left in 1974 to found Creative Artists Agency with Ovitz as chairman, building the start-up into the world’s leading talent agency for actors, directors and screenwriters. The firm branched out into unorthodox areas — brokering the sale of three major Hollywood studios; creating advertising for Coca-Cola; and forging alliances with early Silicon Valley companies like Intel and Microsoft. Ovitz resigned from CAA in 1995 to become president of the Walt Disney Company under its chairman Michael Eisner but was dismissed after 14 months, leaving with a severance package of $140 million.