Michael Ovitz

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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".^[1] Ovitz sold AMG to Jeff Kwatinetz for an estimated $12 million, which was merged into his talent agency The Firm.^[2]

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^[3].