Michael Ovitz

Michael Ovitz (born December 14, 1946, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.) is an American talent manager who, as cofounder and head of the Creative Artists Agency (CAA), was considered one of Hollywood’s most powerful figures in the 1980s and ’90s.

Ovitz’s parents wanted him to become a doctor, but, while working part-time as a guide for Universal Studios, he decided to pursue a career in Hollywood. After graduating from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1968, he took a job in the mail room of the William Morris Agency, a leading talent-management firm. The aggressive and disciplined Ovitz soon worked his way up to become an agent, representing such television talents as Merv Griffin and Bob Barker. In 1975 he joined with four other Morris agents to form Creative Artists Agency (CAA).

Thanks to Ovitz’s knack for hustling up clients, CAA was quickly transformed into arguably the most prominent talent agency, and Ovitz became known as the most powerful man in Hollywood. Through the company, Ovitz promoted and profited from such clients as Madonna, Bill Murray, Whoopi Goldberg, Tom Cruise, Steven Spielberg, and David Letterman. As Letterman’s agent, Ovitz negotiated in 1993 an unprecedented three-year, $42 million contract for the talk-show host to leave his late-night program at NBC for a show scheduled one hour earlier on CBS.

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Later Ovitz ventured beyond the talent-agent business to advise the French bank Crédit Lyonnais on its red-inked entertainment holdings, particularly Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Inc. (MGM). In 1993 he arranged a deal in which the bank would forgive past loans to MGM, give it additional moneys to increase film production, and appoint as the studio’s new chairman Frank G. Mancuso, an experienced Hollywood hand and a friend of Ovitz. While Crédit Lyonnais praised its agent’s counsel, the press and CAA’s competitors alleged a conflict of interest because Ovitz was both advising a studio and representing clients who might seek work there. Defending the deal, Ovitz insisted that “Hollywood is a small, familial place,” where “everyone does business with everybody else.”

In 1995 Ovitz left CAA to become president of the Walt Disney Company. After months of internal power struggles with CEO Michael Eisner, Ovitz resigned in 1996 and was given a severance package valued at more than $140 million. This decision enraged shareholders, who later filed a lawsuit against the board, citing breach of fiduciary duty regarding the payout; a court later ruled that he could keep the money. In 1998 Ovitz bought a fledgling theatre company, Livent Inc. Within six months, however, the struggling business filed for bankruptcy protection, and it was later sold. Attempting to regain his prominence as a Hollywood manager, Ovitz founded Artists Management Group (AMG) in 1999 and quickly lured high-profile managers and talent to his new business. His clientele included Martin Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Robin Williams, all of whom he had lured away from CAA. Ovitz, however, was unable to match his former success, and in 2002 he sold his interest in AMG. In a magazine interview later that year, he claimed that his downfall was caused by the “gay mafia,” which allegedly included entertainment executive David Geffen and Bernard Weinraub, a reporter with The New York Times. The comments caused an uproar, and Ovitz subsequently apologized.

Ovitz was known for his extensive art collection, which included works by Pablo Picasso, Willem de Kooning, Ellsworth Kelly, and Jasper Johns. The memoir Who Is Michael Ovitz? was published in 2018.