Michael Ovitz Biography

Michael Ovitz is an American businessman, investor, and philanthropist. He donated $25 million to fundraising efforts for UCLA’s Medical Center.

Prior to this, he was a talent agent who co-founded Creative Artists Agency (CAA) in 1975 and served as its chairman until 1995. Furthermore, he served as President of The Walt Disney Company from October 1995 to January 1997.

In addition, Ovitz also provided corporate consulting services, helping negotiate several major international business mergers and deals including Matsushita’s acquisition of MCA/Universal, the financial rescue of MGM/United Artists, and Sony’s acquisition of Columbia Pictures.

Michael Ovitz Age

Ovitz was born on December 14, 1946, in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Therefore, he is 72 years of age as of 2019.

Michael Ovitz Height

He stands at an approximate height of  5 feet 9 inches tall (1.75 m).

Michael Ovitz Family

Ovitz was born to a Romanian Jewish family of parents liquor wholesaler and his wife in Chicago, Illinois, United States. He was raised in Encino, California, he was student body president at Birmingham High School in Van Nuys, a classmate of Sally Field and Michael Milken.
While a pre-med student at UCLA and president of Zeta Beta Tau, he began his entertainment career as a part-time tour guide at Universal Studios.

Upon graduating from UCLA in 1968 with a degree in theater, film, and television, instead of going to medical school he secured a job in the mailroom at the William Morris Agency. After the mailing room, Ovitz left for graduate school, however before long returned (something William Morris typically didn’t permit).

Citing this, he was before long advanced, turning into a profoundly effective TV operator. After six years, he and four other youthful partners left William Morris to establish Creative Artists Agency.

Michael Ovitz Net Worth

Michael sits at an approximate net worth of 500 million US dollars as of 2019. He has earned his lucrative income from his career as a talent agent, businessman, investor, and philanthropist.

Michael Ovitz Wife – Michael Ovitz Daughter

Michael married his beautiful life spouse named Judy Ovitz. The lovely wedded wife was born as Judith Reich and is an actress, known for Back to the Future Part II (1989), Junior (1994) and Ghostbusters II (1989).

The duo has been married since August 3, 1969, up to date. Prior to this, the two share three gorgeous children together. However, Ovitz became engaged to Tamara Mellon in the year 2015, despite still being legally married to his wife Judy.

Currently, he acts as a private investor who has informally advised the careers of luminaries such as Martin Scorsese. Being active in philanthropy, he donated $25 million in 1999 to spearhead fundraising efforts for UCLA’s Medical Center and has contributed significantly to numerous other philanthropic endeavors.

Furthermore, he is a private investor and businessman, his notable activities have ranged from attempts to bring an NFL team to the Los Angeles Coliseum to ventures in online media.

His daughter, Kimberly Ovitz, is a New York, fashion designer. He is considered among the world’s top 200 art collectors. Ovitz owns works by Pablo Picasso, Jasper Johns, Willem de Kooning, Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, and many others.

Michael Ovitz Book

Ovitz’s memoir “Who Is Michael Ovitz” is a fascinating study of how one agency managed to alter the balance of forces in an industry, usurping the role of studios by cornering access to talent.

In addition, Ovitz opens up about the bridges he burned, the deals he closed, the state of showbiz, Ron Meyer, David Geffen, Michael Eisner (a “monumental betrayal”) and his life now with fiancee and shoe mogul Tamara Mellon.

After decades of near-silence in the face of intense controversy, Michael Ovitz is finally telling his whole story in this blistering, unforgettable memoir.

The book also reveals him as a serious bearer of grudges. Over the years, he feuded with David Geffen, the billionaire media mogul: Ovitz reveals in the book that he once went to Geffen’s office threatening to “beat the living shit” out of him. On another occasion, he vented to a Vanity Fair reporter that Geffen was part of a Hollywood “gay mafia”. He regrets both incidents, he tells me and reveals the two recently made up over a civil lunch.

Fortunately, there was no psychiatrist required this time. CAA launched a new generation of stars, and we have Ovitz to thank, if that is the right word, for launching the career of Steven Seagal, an action hero so wooden his performances could have been hewn directly from a tree trunk.

Ovitz is a keen martial arts practitioner — his Gordon Gekko-style morning routine involved waking at the crack of dawn for a head-clearing training session before tackling calls with his clients. Seagal was one of his teachers, capable of disarming multiple assailants with a few karate chops. Naturally, Ovitz put him in the movies.

Michael Ovitz House – Tamara Mellon

Ovitz bought a $5.5m Malibu house that was being sold by Berry Gordy, the Motown founder — one that Meyer had told him he wanted to buy.

Citing this, he is giving a tour of his Beverly Hills home, a 28,000-square-foot, Michael Maltzan-designed museum that consists of three interconnected boxes wrapped in a perforated-steel skin. It’s an art-lover’s paradise: Lichtensteins in the stairwell, Picassos and Rothkos on the left, an Ellsworth Kelly over there.

Prior to this, he shares the Benedict Canyon estate with his fiancee, Jimmy Choo co-founder and shoe mogul Tamara Mellon, and her teenage daughter. “Luckily, our aesthetics are very similar,” says Mellon, who has been dating Ovitz since 2011 (they became engaged in 2014). “I’ve introduced Michael to fashion photographers like Helmut Newton, Daido Moriyama, and Hiro. He’s introduced me to countless artists.”

Moreover, Ovitz joined by Mellon sits down with THR editorial director Matthew Belloni in their home overlooking an elevated reflecting pool (and, in the distance, among the modern sculptures, a playset for Ovitz’s grandchildren).

Mellon then sat for a separate interview on her business with THR fashion and beauty director Carol McColgin. The Ovitz conversation, edited and condensed below, delved into Ovitz’s falling out and reconnection with Meyer and David Geffen, the “heartbreaking” sale of CAA to private equity investor TPG Global, the Murdochs’ offloading of Fox to Disney, and the lessons he’s learned. Says Ovitz: “I thought it was a sin to be vulnerable, and in the past 10 years, with a lot of help from Tamara and my own kids and getting older.

Michael Ovitz Art Collection

Ovitz and fellow William Morris Agents Ron Meyer, William Haber, Rowland Perkins and Mike Rosenfeld dissatisfied with his pay and promotion opportunities planned to form their own agency after raising money.

Upon learning of their plans, William Morris fired them in January 1975. On borrowing only $21,000 from a bank, the agents rented a small office, conducting business on card tables and rented chairs, their wives taking turns as agency receptionist.

He reportedly had three new film packaging deals sold in the first week. Within four years CAA had $90.2 million in annual bookings and was the third-largest Hollywood agency. With his direction, CAA quickly grew from a start-up organization to the world’s leading talent agency, expanding from television into the film, investment banking, and advertising.

He was known for assembling package deals, wherein CAA would utilize its talent base to provide directors, actors, and screenwriters to a studio, thus shifting the negotiating leverage from the studios to the talent. While CAA rose in stature Ovitz became one of the most powerful men in Hollywood; he was so influential that, when The New York Times wrote about him in 1989, industry officials, executives and on-screen characters wouldn’t remark or would possibly do as such if CAA permitted it.

He was elevated to President, at that point to Chairman of the Board, Ovitz’s jobs at CAA were various. Ovitz filled in as a headhunter to Hollywood entertainers Tom Cruise, Dustin Hoffman, Kevin Costner, John Belushi, Michael Douglas, Bill Murray, Sylvester Stallone, and Barbra Streisand, just as executives Steven Spielberg, Barry Levinson, and Sydney Pollack.

Ovitz likewise gave corporate counseling administrations, arranging a few significant worldwide business mergers and arrangements including Matsushita’s obtaining of MCA/Universal, the money related salvage of MGM/United Artists and Sony’s procurement of Columbia Pictures. His marking of Coca-Cola as a CAA customer from organization McCann-Erickson significantly affected the publicizing business.

Ovitz arranged 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. Ovitz loathed attention, in any case, with the Times announcing that “Ovitz is one of the not many individuals on the planet who possess practically every one of the photos ever taken of them”.

Michael Ovitz Disney

Ovitz resigned from CAA in 1995 to become president of The Walt Disney Company under chairman Michael Eisner. He quickly grew frustrated with his role in the company and a vague definition of duties.

Upon a tumultuous year as Eisner’s second in command, he was dismissed by Eisner on January 1997 and left Disney with a (previously agreed upon) severance package valued at $38 million in cash and an estimated $100 million in stock.

Disney shareholders later sued Eisner and Disney’s board of directors for awarding Ovitz such a large severance package. Afterwards court proceedings reflect that Ovitz’s stock options were granted when he was hired to induce him to join the company, not granted when he was fired. The Year 2005 the court upheld Disney’s payment.

Michael Ovitz Contacts

• Location: Greater Los Angeles Area
• Work: Owner @ Broad Beach Ventures LLC
  Co-Founder and Chairman @ Creative Artists Agency
• Education: BA @ University of California, Los Angeles

Michael Ovitz Email

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Further information regarding Ovitz’s email is currently under review and will be updated soon.

Michael Ovitz  A16Z

January 1999, Ovitz formed CKE, comprising four distinct companies: Artist Management Group (AMG), Artist Production Group (APG), Artist Television Group (ATG) and Lynx Technology Group (LTG). The year 2002 Ovitz sold AMG to Jeff Kwatinetz for an undisclosed amount, which was merged into his management group The Firm.

Upon the sale of AMG, Ovitz became the subject of controversy for remarks made in a Vanity Fair interview, wherein he blamed the downfall of AMG upon a Hollywood cabal led by Dreamworks co-founder David Geffen which Ovitz described as the “gay mafia” (despite the fact that most of its purported members were not gay).

To add to Geffen, the list included The New York Times Hollywood correspondent Bernie Weinraub, Disney Chairman (and former employer) Michael Eisner; Bryan Lourd, Kevin Huvane, and Richard Lovett, partners at CAA, Universal Studios president Ronald Meyer (Ovitz’s former partner at CAA); and Vivendi Universal Entertainment CEO Barry Diller.

“If I were to establish the foundation of the negativity,” Ovitz stated, “it all comes down to David Geffen and Bernie Weinraub. Everything comes back to those two. It’s the same group [quoted] in every article.” Ovitz later apologized for his Vanity Fair comments.

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