Rachael Horovitz is an American film producer.
Horovitz is the daughter of playwright Israel Horovitz and the late painter Doris Keefe as well as a sister of musician Adam Horovitz.[1] She is the partner of British television executive Michael Jackson with whom she has twin sons and lives in New York City.
Raised in Greenwich Village, Horovitz graduated from Phillips Academy Andover, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. After college, she lived in Paris where, at the suggestion of family friend playwright Samuel Beckett, she went to work at Shakespeare and Co. bookstore on the Left Bank. Following her return to New York, she worked in Mayor Edward I. Koch’s administration as an assistant to Parks Commissioner Henry J. Stern.
Horovitz began working in film in 1985 when she was hired to work at Dino De Laurentiis Productions in publicity. While at the company, she worked on campaigns for David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, Michael Cimino’s The Sicilian and Roman Polanski’s Pirates, among other films.
In 1988 she began producing short works by young playwrights such as Kenneth Lonergan and Jon Robin Baitz at NY’s Naked Angels theatre company, and also produced the Rushmore Festival, known for its commissions of new American translations of classical plays. During her tenure, Rushmore commissioned and produced the award-winning Paul Schmidt translation of The Cherry Orchard which had its premiere at the festival. Horovitz’s film projects at that time included developing screenplays with emerging writer/directors Lonergan, Noah Baumbach, and Brad Anderson. In 1990, Horovitz produced her first feature, Larry Fessenden’s No Telling. She also developed and co-produced Anderson’s Next Stop Wonderland.
Horovitz joined New Line Cinema as Vice President of Fine Line Features where she developed Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson’s Rushmore screenplay and acquired dozens of films including works by Woody Allen, Bernardo Bertolucci and Michel Gondry. She was also responsible for bringing into the company and supervising David Mamet’s award-winning comedy State and Main, which she co-produced, as well as Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor’s script for About Schmidt, directed by Payne, which she executive produced.[2] The film won Golden Globe Awards for Nicholson and the screenplay, and was nominated for two Academy Awards.[3] In 2001, Horovitz left New Line for Revolution Studios to work as a senior executive in the company’s New York office. While there, she worked closely with Julia Roberts' production company on such projects as Mike Newell’s Mona Lisa Smile, Maid In Manhattan, and Samantha: An American Girl Holiday, the first American Girl film, which she executive-produced.
Horovitz formed Specialty Films in 2003. Her productions include HBO’s Grey Gardens for which she received an Emmy, a Golden Globe, Best Film from the Broadcast and Television Critics Awards and the 2010 David Wolper Producer of the Year Award from the Producers Guild.[4] The film stars Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange and won major awards for both actresses.
The first big-screen project she put into development via Specialty Films was Michael Lewis’ best-selling book Moneyball which she set up at Sony Pictures in 2004.[5] The film was directed by Bennett Miller in 2010 and was released in September 2011 starring Brad Pitt.
Active in New York City and its causes throughout her working life, Horovitz has served for many years on the Board of Directors of the Ghetto Film School, through which she helped found in 2009 The Cinema School, the country’s first public high school specializing in film.[6]