Sherry Lansing
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Sherry Lansing (born July 31, 1944 in Chicago, Illinois as Sherry Lee Heimann) is the former CEO of Paramount Studios and the first woman to head a major studio.
Her mother fled from Nazi Germany at age 17, and spoke no English when she went to the United States. Lansing attended the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools and graduated in 1962. She earned a B.A. from Northwestern University where she was a member of Sigma Delta Tau sorority.
She pursued an acting career, but dissatisfied with her own acting skills, she decided to learn more about the film industry from the ground up. She took a job with MGM as head script reader and worked on two successful movies, The China Syndrome and Kramer vs. Kramer.
Lansing's work at MGM eventually led to an appointment in 1980, at age 35, as the first female president of 20th Century Fox. She was also part of a production company run by Stanley Jaffe. In 1992, she was offered the chairmanship of Paramount Pictures' Motion Picture Group. During her tenure at Paramount, the studio produced such blockbuster hits as Forrest Gump, Braveheart, and Titanic.
As studio chief she focused on bottom-line cost rather than market share, preferring to take fewer risks and make lower-budget films than other studios. While this strategy paid off for a long time, in the face of increasing numbers of flops, she stepped down as CEO of Paramount in 2004.
She is now a Regent of the University of California. She sits on the boards of The Carter Center, DonorsChoose, Qualcomm, Teach for America, The American Association for Cancer Research, and Friends of Cancer Research.
In 2005, she created The Sherry Lansing Foundation which is dedicated to raising awareness and funds for cancer research. She is a recipient of UCLA Anderson School of Management's highest honor-the Exemplary Leadership in Management (ELM) Award.
Lansing married Academy award winning director William Friedkin on 6 July 1991.
In 2007, she will receive the Academy's Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.
