There are many ways to dance your way to the center of the mainstream Hollywood system. Here are the dances done by 15 prominent Industry women, all boiled down to 10 steps that represent their most significant strides.
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Penny Marshall, Director
1. Having performed as a teen on The Jackie Gleason Show, attended the University of New Mexico, studied math and psychology, and appeared on the short-lived 1968 TV series How Sweet It Is, her brother Garry's production (both grew up in the Bronx and changed their last name from Marschiarelli to Marshall). Became a regular on the 1970-'75 sitcom The Odd Couple.
2. Married Rob Reiner in 1971, just as he was becoming a massive TV star with the hit TV show All in the Family. Their home became the crossroads for some of the funniest and most talented people in Hollywood. Later Marshall would say, "I thought I had it locked when I married Rob. Then I didn't have to be successful because he was doing so well."
3. Became a regular on the 1974-'84 TV show Happy Days, leading to Laverne & Shirley, a show created for her by her brother Garry. In the midst of the long stretch of TV celebritydom, her eight-year marriage to Reiner ended.
4. Having made her directing debut with episodes of Laverne & Shirley, stepped in as a replacement director on her friend Whoopi Goldberg's 1986 comedy Jumpin Jack Flash.
5. Directed the 1988 comedy Big, starring Tom Hanks, after having been given the script by pal James L. Brooks; it turned out to be an Oscar-nominated megahit. Became the first female director to surmount $100 million at the box office. ("I'm from the negativity and depression school," she has said. "I need an enormous amount of encouragement to do anything--even go out to dinner.")
6. Directed 1990's Oscar-nominated Awakenings, which starred Robin Williams and Robert De Niro, proving she was bankable with drama as well as comedy. Became famous for saying things to actors like, "Please do it this way, I have a headache and I'm going to throw up," though it's unlikely it was De Niro she said it to.
7. Working again with Hanks, directed 1992's megahit A League of Their Own, adding Madonna and Geena Davis to the list of big names she was able, through smarts and innate gallows humor, to manage on set. (Noted for begging Geena Davis during take after take, "Hit the ball, hit the ball.. . put me out of my misery!")
8. Directed Danny DeVito in 1994's disappointing Renaissance Man.
9. Proved herself a) unafraid of snobbery, b) determined to make lots of money, and c) well aware of her status as a B-level cultural icon by making an ongoing series of Kmart TV commercials with Rosie O'Donnell.
10. Currently in a box-office slump following 1996's lemon The Preacher's Wife, but has some 14 projects in development. Executive-produced the recently shot Mom's On the Roof with Elle Macpherson.
Sherry Lansing, Chairman and CEO, Paramount Motion Pictures Group
1. After graduating cum laude from Northwestern University (she majored in math, English and theater), taught math in Watts in the late '60s. Got modeling work and became a Hollywood starlet, with parts in 1970's Rio Lobo and Loving.
2. Became a freelance script reader at $5 an hour. Appeared on the TV series Banyon in 1972 and 1973.
3. Quickly rose from story editor to production VP (1974), and then to a development head, all at independent companies.
4. Got her first major studio job as executive story editor at MGM in 1975, and was later promoted to VP of creative affairs there under then-MGM boss Daniel Melnick (who recommended she not let her secretary call her "Sherry").
5. Became a VP of production at Columbia Pictures in 1977, where she oversaw classy pictures like The China Syndrome and Kramer vs. Kramer, both of which were produced by Stanley R. Jaffe.
6. Was hired by 20th Century Fox to be the first female president of production at a studio in 1980, where she championed 1981's Academy Award-winning Chariots of Fire (despite a lack of support from Fox's male executives, who called the movie "boring") and 1982's The Verdict.
7. Linked up with Jaffe in 1983 to form Jaffe-Lansing Productions, which produced, among other films, 1987's Fatal Attraction (over $350 million worldwide gross) and 1988's The Accused (featuring Jodie Foster's Oscar-winning performance), both of which were distributed by Paramount.
8. With Jaffe tapped to head Paramount's parent company in 1991, continued on her own, producing Indecent Proposal.
9. Hired by Jaffe to be chairman of Paramount Pictures' Motion Picture Group in 1992 and proceeded to turn the company's fortunes around, beginning with the 1993 release of the movie she herself had produced, Indecent Proposal.
10. Was instrumental in guiding Forrest Gump to its $500 million worldwide box office and 1995 Oscar triumph by greenlighting the film, overseeing the budget and insisting on script reworkings. In 1995, signed on to remain as Paramount chair until the year 2000, and accrued even greater clout with the worldwide success of 1996's Mission: Impossible, the revitalization of the Star Trek franchise with the 1996 hit Star Trek: First Contact, the success of Face/Off, and her savvy handling of a minimum-risk deal and maximum-profit marketing for Titanic.
Lindsay Doran, President, United Artists
1. Armed with a B.A. in creative media from the University of California at Santa Cruz, took off for London in the early '70s and worked as a film historian and book editor for The World Encyclopedia of Film and The Oxford Companion to Film.
2. Moved to Pennsylvania, where she produced documentaries for public TV.
3. Moved to L.A. to work a six-year stint at Avco Embassy Pictures till 1985, establishing a reputation for loyalty as she moved up from creative affairs assistant to story executive to vice president of creative affairs. Earned a rep for skill with developing screenplays while working on projects like This Is Spinal Tap and The Sure Thing.
4. Joined Paramount as senior VP of production in 1985, working under Frank Mancuso. Nurtured the John Hughes successes Pretty in Pink and Ferris Bueller's Day Off, as well as the surprise blockbuster Ghost.
5. Left Paramount in 1989 to become president of Sydney Pollack's Mirage Entertainment.
6. Took a low profile behind Pollack while effectively developing films such as Dead Again, starring Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh, and the Pollack-directed John Grisham smash The Firm, starring Tom Cruise.
7. For her pet project Sense and Sensibility, hired Emma Thompson to write the screenplay. ("I would write a version, Lindsay would read it and send me notes," Thompson has said. "Then I would cry for a while and then go back to work. And that's how it was for three years.")
8. Managed a masterful, obsessive marketing campaign for Sense and Sensibility, rejecting 100 trailers and 400 posters before settling on a strategy that resulted in good box office, Oscar nominations, Golden Globes and an Oscar for Best Screenplay Adaptation. (Speaking of obsessive enterprises--Doran spent years cataloging personal items bought from the estate of French humanist director Jean Renoir.)
9. Left Pollack's Mirage Entertainment in 1996 (amid reports there'd been a falling-out over her failure to thank Pollack during her Golden Globe acceptance speech), and was courted by Paramount, Sony, DreamWorks and United Artists.
10. Was hired in 1996 by long-ago boss Frank Mancuso, now helming MGM/UA, to replace John Calley as president of United Artists, where she inherited Tomorrow Never Dies and The Man in the Iron Mask, and started buying up prestigious properties like the Civil War saga Cold Mountain.
Nora Ephron, Director/Screenwriter /Producer/Novelist
1. Was born into the Industry the daughter of writing team Henry and Phoebe Ephron, attended Beverly Hills High and went east for college at Wellesley (class of '62).
2. Hit the Big Apple to start a journalism career, and wrote for Esquire and the New York Times magazine in the '70s, concluding from this experience, "I couldn't afford to live on a journalist's salary in Manhattan."
3. Cowrote the screenplay for 1983's critical and box-office success Silkwood, starring Meryl Streep and Cher, which was nominated for five Oscars, including Best Screenplay. ("All of a sudden in the late '70s," Ephron has said, "it seemed that everybody in New York was writing a script. And I'm nothing if not a follower.")
4. Following the breakup of her marriage to All the President's Men coauthor Carl Bernstein, wrote the roman a clef Heartburn, then adapted it for the 1986 movie version which starred Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson and flopped; married crime journalist Nicholas Pileggi the following year.
5. Produced her first films, both of which she'd written, Cookie (a bomb, coscripted with Alice Arlen) and When Harry Met Sally..., Rob Reiner's huge hit in 1989. Earned her second Oscar nomination for When Harry Met Sally....
6. Wrote the 1990 dud My Blue Heaven, starring Steve Martin.
7. Made a tepid directorial debut with the 1992 comedy This Is My Life, which she coscripted with her sister, Delia.
8. Cowrote and directed the 1993 smash hit Sleepless in Seattle, starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, and earned her third Oscar nomination.
9. On the heels of grand success, cowrote and directed 1994's bomb Mixed Nuts, starring Steve Martin. Wrote, directed and produced 1996's Michael, which was a huge hit.
10. Currently set to direct the reteamed Hanks and Ryan in You Have Mail, a reworking of the Jimmy Stewart/Margaret Sullavan classic The Shop Around the Corner, for which she (and Delia) rewrote Wendy Wasserstein's script. (Although she is prolific, she is no workaholic: she aims for five pages a day when writing, and, "If I finish by 9:30 a.m., I quit for the day.")
Amy Heckerling, Director/Writer
1. Born of working-class parents in the Bronx, worked her way through NYU's film school, where, in 1975, she made a short film starring future megaproducer Joel Silver, and honed a characteristic no-nonsense toughness that led her to say later, "I didn't work so hard to put myself through film school to kowtow to movie stars, and all that nonsense."
2. Attended the American Film Institute, where she made the 1977 short film Getting It Over With.
3. Worked as a sound and video editor while developing projects at Warner Bros. and MGM and waiting for the big break.
4. Hired to direct Cameron Crowe's 1982 teen comedy Fast Times at Ridgemont High and turned it into a breakout instant classic that jump-started the careers of Sean Penn and Jennifer Jason Leigh.
5. Directed the comedy Johnny Dangerously with the new young star Michael Keaton in 1984 to little critical or box-office avail, then hit box-office pay dirt again with 1985's National Lampoon's European Vacation.
6. Developed the Fast Times television series in 1986, and served as writer/producer on the cop sitcom Tough Cookies. (Also produced a baby with then-husband Neal Israel, director of Bachelor Party.)
7. Used her experiences as the mother of an infant to write and direct 1989's sleeper blockbuster Look Who's Talking, which turned out to be John Travolta's first comeback.
8. Wrote and directed 1990's Look Who's Talking Too and produced 1993's Look Who's Talking Now, towing Kirstie Alley and Travolta along for both.
9. Directed her own script for 1995's teen comedy Clueless, which she researched by reading Seventeen and Sassy and hanging out at L.A. high schools jotting down teen slang. Became exec producer on the Clueless TV series.
10. Continued a personal policy of attending to her child, sleeping late and not always answering the phone, while managing to produce A Night at the Roxbury and working on her own script, Say Uncle. ("I live in my own little world. I have people around me that are tough. If I spent my energy in that place [the business world] I wouldn't be able to follow teenagers around and write dialogue.")
Lucy Fisher, Vice Chairman, Columbia TriStar Pictures
1. Graduated cum laude with a B.A. in English from Harvard and began her Hollywood career in the early '70s reading and writing "coverage" for scripts at United Artists, before becoming a story editor at Samuel Goldwyn Jr. Productions.
2. Hired by MGM, where she rose from executive story editor to executive in charge of creative affairs (and helped launch Fame).
3. Hired as creative affairs VP then production VP at 20th Century Fox before leaving to serve as head of worldwide production at Francis Ford Coppola's American Zoetrope Studios in 1979.
4. Left Zoetrope for Warner Bros. in 1981 (the same year she posed in a fashion spread for Town & Country wearing an Adolfo gown), rising to become senior VP of production in 1984.
5. Oversaw classy projects like 1985's The Color Purple, 1987's Empire of the Sun, 1987's The Witches of Eastwick and 1988's Gorillas in the Mist, developing a collaborative relationship with Steven Spielberg and other filmmakers. (When she married producer Doug Wick and began having kids, it was reported that "such A-list directors as Steven Spielberg and George Miller walked the halls of Warner's calming her colicky first child.")
6. Survived 1990's The Bonfire of the Vanities debacle, maintaining her relationship with director Brian De Palma even after he became frustrated with other Warner execs.
7. Became Warner Bros. executive VP of worldwide theatrical production in 1993, all the while integrating a "real life" into her professional life. After her third child, negotiated a reduction of her work week to three days. Later, she recalled, "Bob [Daly] asked me to go up to four days. I said, 'Is Steven Spielberg complaining? Ivan Reitman? Neil Jordan?' and he said no. I said, 'Is somebody internally complaining?' And he said no. I said, 'So what is it?' Bob said, 'Well, I have to come to work five days.'"
8. Left Warner Bros. in 1996 after 14 years to become vice chairman of Columbia TriStar Pictures, where one of her early exertions of will was to convince Cameron Crowe and James L. Brooks to fire the original child actor cast as Renee Zellweger's son in Jerry Maguire.
9. Persuaded Jack Nicholson to make As Good As It Gets by offering him Fridays off, and gambled that the cost of doing so would be recouped in box office.
10. Credited with tweaking Men in Black, My Best Friend's Wedding and Air Force One into hits which helped make Sony number one at the box office in 1997. (And she still takes Fridays off.)
Lisa Henson, Producer
1. Born the daughter of Muppet maestro Jim Henson, whom she accompanied as an undergrad to meetings in the early '80s with the likes of Sherry Lansing, then president of production at 20th Century Fox. ("When I went to Hollywood after college, I went with the idea that my opinion would automatically count.")
2. Armed with a B.A. in ancient Greek folklore and mythology from Harvard (where she was the first woman president of the Harvard Lampoon), started out at Warner Bros. in 1983 as executive assistant to soon-to-be-bigwigs Mark Canton and Lucy Fisher.
3. Got promoted to director of creative affairs in 1985, then production VP in 1986, then senior production VP in 1990. Credited with an appreciation of diverse genres, although comedies and male action adventures are said to be her favorites (was an early proponent of what would become the Lethal Weapon series).
4. Championed an eccentric animator named Tim Burton and helped him evolve into a mainstream director with Batman in 1989. Talked up lower-budget films, including 199l's New Jack City (one of the first big-studio "gangsta" flicks).
5. Joined her siblings in a grueling legal battle (with Disney) to preserve Jim Henson's company following his death in 1990.
6. Shortly after becoming executive VP for Warner Bros. in 1991, apparently became disenchanted with her lack of a personal life, and when her contract expired, didn't renew it. Instead, went on a months-long trek through Buddhist temples in India and Tibet with her sister.
7. In 1993, brought in to Columbia Pictures as eventual president by chairman Mark Canton just as the studio was reeling with failures. At 33, was the youngest studio head in town, about whom Newsweek reported, "Many believe she's just the miracle Columbia needs."
8. While overseeing 1994's Oscar-nominated Little Women (which was Amy Pascal's project) and presiding over a studio whose owner, Sony, was taking write-offs on bombs like 1993's The Last Action Hero, was described as impressively self-assured and "every bit the workaholic that her father was," but it was also noted that, "No one has ever accused Lisa of being a soft touch, like her father was."
9. Oversaw 1995's Sense and Sensibility (which was Lindsay Doran's project) and was instrumental in developing 1996's The People vs. Larry Flynt, which she worked on with her new boss Lucy Fisher and producer/Oliver Stone protegee Janet Yang.
10. Seeing the writing on the wall, left Columbia in 1996, one month before Canton was ousted, and negotiated a lucrative production deal with the studio for the company she created with Janet Yang, Manifest Film Company, about which the duo has said, "We're not into bitter-women movies." Manifest's first release: Zero Effect.
Toni Howard, Senior VP and Co-Chair of Motion Picture Talent at ICM
1. Began Hollywood career in the early 1970s as a secretary to agent Freddie Fields and stayed with him six years until "I thought I would die if I served one more cup of coffee."
2. Talked top casting director Lynn Stalmaster into hiring her as an assistant for $200 a week in the late 1970s and discovered that "casting was a great way to understand the business" and also a great way "to be paid for being opinionated."
3. With Stalmaster, put Christopher Reeve in 1978's Superman; Bo Derek in 1979's 10; and Dustin Hoffman, Jessica Lange and Teri Garr in 1982's Tootsie.
4. Learned to handle the nitty-gritty of contract negotiations, including arranging the sequencing of cast credits and the percentage-of-gross deals and ended up bringing director Philip Kaufman the perfect troop of smart and cocky guys--Sam Shepard, Scott Glenn, Ed Harris, Dennis Quaid and Fred Ward--to man 1983's The Right Stuff.
5. Having had enough of dealing with agents--"When I was in casting, I thought the only thing agents did was give out incorrect availabilities and misquote actors' prices"-- became an agent at the William Morris Agency in 1984.
6. Put together a client list that included Anjelica Huston, Anne Bancroft, Jason Robards and James Spader, and earned their loyalty. (Says Huston of Howard, "We have spoken, on average, two times a day for the last 14 years.")
7. Objecting to, among other things, William Morris's treatment of women, left William Morris in 1992 for ICM as leader of a female exodus that included Risa Shapiro, Elaine Goldsmith and Boaty Boatwright.
8. Flourished at ICM, signing clients Samuel L. Jackson and James Woods, among others.
9. Eased Angelica Huston into directing with 1996's critically praised Bastard Out of Carolina.
10. Continued her hands-on agenting, helping Christina Ricci make the transition to adult stardom (with The Ice Storm, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and various indies), and signing new clients like Paul Newman and Cher.
Gale Anne Hurd, Producer
1. Graduated Phi Beta Kappa in economics and communications in 1977 from Stanford and immediately became Roger Corman's executive assistant at New World Pictures, where she learned nuts-and-bolts film production on Corman's low-budget fodder (which included Smokey Bites the Dust, her first producing credit) and worked with young filmmakers such as James Cameron.
2. Produced Cameron's 1984 hit The Terminator, which she had coscripted with him. (She bought the rights to Cameron's part in future Terminators for $1 in exchange for a guarantee he'd direct.) Married Cameron in 1985.
3. Produced Cameron's 1986 megasuccess Aliens.
4. Produced Cameron's 1989 megadisappointment The Abyss; marriage with Cameron ended in '89.
5. Reteamed with Cameron to produce 1991's hit sequel Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
6. On a different note from her previous efforts, produced the arty independent 1992 film The Waterdance.
7. In 1991, signed a production deal with director Brian De Palma at Universal, married De Palma, began working on De Palma's Raising Cain, gave birth to daughter Lolita--named for Hurd's mother, not Nabokov's temptress.
8. Following her 1992 divorce from De Palma, pursued a diverse slate of projects, including both her traditional techno-actioners (1994's No Escape) and smaller, character-driven material (1994's Safe Passage).
9. With one of the soundest reputations in the Industry for getting bang out of a buck, was brought in on 1997's Dante's Peak when its budget neared $100 million. (As she explained at a showbiz seminar, "You have to be incredibly precise, incredibly prepared, and find people who are willing to be incredibly taken advantage of.")
10. On the heels of 1996's disappointing The Ghost and the Darkness and 1997's disappointing The Relic, has the big-budget Bruce Willis summer blockbuster wannabe Armageddon coming up.
Paula Wagner, Tom Cruise's Partner in Cruise/Wagner Productions
1. At the tender age of 12, was answering the phones at her dad's office-supply company outside of Youngstown, Ohio, but ended up going the fine arts route, getting a B.F.A. in drama from Carnegie Mellon and going on to acting gigs on the New York stage and at Yale Repertory in the early 1970s (she once stood in for Meryl Streep).
2. Became an agent at the suggestion of her own agent, joining Susan Smith and Associates in Los Angeles in 1978.
3. Moved over to CAA in 1981 and developed a reputation for being smart--she's credited with seeing Tom Cruise for what he would become when he walked into her office--and showing fierce commitment to her clients. ("There's a reason why her clients always stayed with her--and they did. She's more intelligent than most agents and she doesn't suffer fools gladly," surmises one Industry insider.)
4. Signed other "unknowns" who she nurtured into substantial careers--Kevin Bacon, Aidan Quinn, Emilio Estevez. Signed Demi Moore during the Brat Pack days of About Last Night and guided her through ups and downs to superstardom of Ghost, A Few Good Men and Indecent Proposal as well as the record breaking paychecks that followed.
5. Continued signing impressive talents like Liam Neeson, Oliver Stone and Robert Towne, and was so dedicated to them she took only two weeks off to have her son (with fellow CAA agent and husband Rick Nicita).
("I'll never be the kind of mom who bakes bread," Wagner has said, "but I'll always be there to shoot hoops or talk about art.")
6. As Tom Cruise's agent during the '80s and early '90s, aided him in achieving one of the most remarkably successful careers in Hollywood by putting him in Risky Business (his breakthrough role, it made him into an overnight superstar), Top Gu_n (made him one of the highest-paid actors in town), _The Color of Money (gave him serious dramatic credentials), Rain Man (which attracted four Academy Awards), Born on the Fourth of July (brought him his first Oscar nomination), and A Few Good Men (held his own against an iconic Jack Nicholson).
7. Left CAA in 1992 to form Cruise/Wagner Productions with the superstar (leaving the agenting of Cruise to husband Rick Nicita). Over the next few years acquired and developed a rich slate of projects for Cruise to star in and/or produce, solidifying relationships with some of the most gifted writers in the industry (i.e., Robert Towne, Cameron Crowe).
8. With Cruise, developed and produced the 1996 blockbuster Mission: Impossible, the first film Cruise produced, which grossed over $450 million worldwide.
9. With Cruise, produced the notably non-Tom Cruise-starring film Without Limits, written and directed by Robert Towne.
10. Cruise/Wagner Productions currently has over a dozen high-profile movies in development or production, including the second installment of Mission: Impossible (to be directed by Oliver Stone), the John Woo picture Devil's Soldier and the remake of I Married a Witch, a vehicle designed for Cruise and his wife Nicole Kidman.
Amy Pascal, President, Columbia Pictures
1. Following graduation from UCLA with a B.A. in political science, lasted three weeks as a secretary at CAA before becoming an assistant to producer Tony Garnett, who had a deal with Warner Bros.
2. During six years with Garnett, became his partner (using UCLA interns to be her secretaries), and with him produced Sesame Street Presents Follow That Bird (1985) and Earth Girls Are Easy (1989).
3. Became a production VP at Fox in 1986 ("I had no idea what I was doing--none--and I was very bad at it"), and working under Scott Rudin, developed Cameron Crowe's Say Anything....
4. Hired away from Fox to become production VP at Columbia in 1987 under then-president Dawn Steel ("She was fantastic. She had all this big hair, and she had this big fancy house, and she looked great in jeans, and she had a baby, and she had this big job and was really rich. It was like: I want to be her"). Promoted to executive VP in 1989, shepherding 1990's Awakenings through production and building a relationship with Penny Marshall in the process.
5. Under shifting studio leadership, oversaw what she termed "big movie-star pictures" that included Penny Marshall's 1992 hit A League of Their Own and the 1993 hit Groundhog Day, as well as such flops as 1994's Wolf and I'll Do Anything (both of which she helped to develop, gaining the loyalty of their directors, Mike Nichols and James L. Brooks).
6. Personally oversaw 1994's Little Women, a movie she'd struggled to make for years, hiring scriptwriter Robin Swicord, producer Denise Di Novi and director Gillian Armstrong.
7. Left Columbia in 1994 to become president of production at Turner Pictures Worldwide, where she promptly negotiated an exclusive deal with Di Novi.
8. Initiated an ambitious slate for Turner, consisting of 1996's Michael (building on close ties with Nora Ephron), 1998's Fallen (scripted by Robin Swicord's husband, Nicholas Kazan) and the upcoming City of Angels, starring Nicolas Cage and Meg Ryan.
9. Upon Turner Pictures being absorbed into the Time-Warner/Turner merger, returned to Columbia Pictures as president in 1996, becoming the first executive to be hired by John Calley, who had just left MGM to head Columbia.
10. Working under Calley and Lucy Fisher (whom Pascal has described as her mentor from their days at Warner Bros.), has put together a slate of pictures that includes 8mm, starring Nic Cage, and Houdini, which may star Tom Cruise.
Laura Ziskin, President, Fox 2000 Pictures
1. Raised the daughter of two psychologist parents, got her first showbiz gig writing scripts for The Dating Game after earning a B.A. from USC film school in 1973.
2. Got hired as an assistant to Barbra Streisand and hairdresser-turned-producer Jon Peters, which led to her assistant duties on 1976's A Star Is Born. (Has recounted the first occasion on which legendary screamer Peters vented at her as follows: "I said, 'God, you're so terribly tense. You must be under so much pressure.' I said, 'Sit down,' and I gave him a back rub. It wasn't sexual. I know it sounds like it was, but it wasn't. It totally defused what was going on. He never yelled at me again.")
3. Joined Kaleidoscope Films in 1980 as a partner, which would lead eventually to 1988's D.O.A. and Everybody's All-American, which had been so "developed" from its original, highly touted form that it bombed.
4. In 1984, joined up with Sally Field to form Fogwood Films and produced 1985's Murphy's Romance, which won an Oscar nomination for James Garner.
5. Produced the out-of-nowhere 1987 big hit No Way Out, in which she cast the little known Kevin Costner and turned him into an instant star.
6. Was asked in 1987 by director Garry Marshall to executive-produce the film that would become--and she's the one credited by insiders with pushing it in a commercial direction--1990's blockbuster Pretty Woman. (When she confided to friend/screenwriter Anna Hamilton Phelan that she was afraid the movie glorified prostitution, Phelan comforted her by saying, "Laura, just make the movie. This will not be the movie that will get you into heaven, but it's OK.")
7. Produced 1991's The Doctor, director Randa Haines's long-awaited follow-up to Children of a Lesser God.
8. Produced 1991's What About Bob?, a project she "coconceived" with the screenwriter Alvin Sargent, the estimable scripter of such films as Ordinary People and Julia, who also happened to be her companion. (Her later description of a contretemps in which Bill Murray grabbed her glasses off her face and broke them in a fit of anger revealed her pragmatic approach to Hollywood temperament: "When I saw him the next day ... I remember thinking that the only way I can go on and continue to work with him was to do what I did, which was to say to him, 'That must have really been hard for you. That must have really been painful.' And it was amazing, it just defused everything. He goes, 'Yeah, I hate it when I get like that.' It was a humanizing moment.")
9. Under a production deal at Sony, produced 1992's unsuccessful Stephen Frears social comedy Hero (which she'd coconceived with Sargent while watching the 1988 presidential election), and 1995's critically successful Gus Van Sant satire To Die For, and bought the screenplay As Good As It Gets, which she later executive-produced.
10. Named president of Fox 2000 Pictures in 1994 (a job she took in part because her 10-year-old daughter had burst into tears when she went off to Canada for five months to make To Die For), and has overseen Courage Under Fire, Inventing The Abbotts, Soul Food and the upcoming The Thin Red Line (notable for being Terrence Malick's return to filmmaking). An aggressive buyer of literary properties, spent upwards of $10 million during a few notable weeks, and has taken knocks on some of her purchases--like One Fine Day and Volcano.
Denise Di Novi, Producer
1. Got her first gigs in the '70s in Canada as a staff writer for Canada A.M. and as an on-air reporter and film critic for City-TV News.
2. Worked as a unit publicist on the 1980 Canadian thriller Final Assignment.
3. Served in various production capacities in Canada and L.A. before becoming production VP at New World Pictures in 1985.
4. In 1989, produced the low-budget, high-style, breakout teenage-suicide black comedy Heathers, working with screenwriter Daniel Waters, director Michael Lehmann and young stars Winona Ryder and Christian Slater. (The script had impressed much of Hollywood--but most considered it too offbeat. "When we got the green light," said Di Novi, "we were congratulated by every other studio. They wouldn't make it themselves, but they all said they were glad the movie was getting made.")
5. Teamed up with director Tim Burton in Burton/Di Novi Pictures and produced 1990's Edward Scissorhands.
6. Keeping a low profile behind Burton's eccentric persona, produced Batman Returns (written by Daniel Waters) in 1992, and The Nightmare Before Christmas in 1993.
7. Developed screenwriting team Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski's Ed Wood with director Michael Lehmann with the idea of having herself and Burton produce. Burton ended up wanting to direct and Lehmann coproduced.
8. Left Burton in 1992 to set up her own shingle at Columbia, but continued to work with him on projects like 1996's James and the Giant Peach.
9. Asked by Columbia executive Amy Pascal to produce 1994's Little Women, and called up Winona Ryder, with whom she'd talked about the book Little Women on the set of Heathers, to ask her to take the starring role.
10. Produced the upcoming Almost Heroes, and is currently producing Practical Magic, a dark comic fable originally scripted by Little Women's screenwriter Robin Swicord and starring Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman.
Kathleen Kennedy, Producer
1. With a B.A. in telecommunications from San Diego State University, got her first Hollywood gig as a production assistant for John Milius, whose company was producing Steven Spielberg's 1979 disaster 1941.
2. With poor typing skills, became an assistant to Steven Spielberg in 1979.
3. Received associate producer credit on 1981's Raiders of the Lost Ark, on which she met future business partner and husband Frank Marshall (whose college roommate happened to have been Mike Ovitz).
4. Associate-produced 1982's Poltergeist and earned her first full producer's credit the same year on box-office champ E.T. The Extra Terrestrial.
5. Cofounded Amblin Entertainment with Spielberg and Marshall and executive-produced 1984's Gremlins.
6. In 1985, executive-produced Back to the Future and produced The Color Purple. Became president of Amblin in 1986.
7. Executive-produced the top-grossing film of 1988, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
8. Produced 1990's Arachnophobia, which her husband directed. ("I was very used to standing on the set, coming up with ideas. Frank, at first, was like, 'Don't do that to me! You have to realize that movies are made up of a lot of guys, not a lot of women, and these guys are thinking, Oh great. His wife's telling him what to do.' We got beyond that; it was a good growing experience. But I used to always say, 'Look, I do this with Steven. What's your problem?'")
9. Left Amblin with Marshall in 1992 and continued to further her proven ability as a money-making producer with such Spielberg projects as 1993's Jurassic Park and the Oscar-winning Schindler's List. Perhaps as an explanation of Kennedy's ability to oversee many complex projects at once, Ovitz noted of her, "She has the cleanest house and most organized closets in Hollywood."
10. Produced the 1995 releases The Indian in the Cupboard, Congo and The Bridges of Madison County (for Amblin), then produced 1996's Twister and 1997's The Lost World: Jurassic Park (both for Amblin). Affiliated with Disney, looks to keep making big movies with and without Spielberg.
Kathryn Bigelow, Director/Screenwriter
1. In the early 1970s, after studying at the San Francisco Institute of Art, became a Whitney Museum scholarship-winning conceptual artist, producing such work as an installation piece of clanging pipes meant, according to Bigelow, to dramatize "potentiality."
2. Earned a Masters of Fine Arts in film studies at Columbia in 1979, making her first short film in the process and posing for a Gap ad on the side.
3. Codirected (with Monty Montgomery) the 1981 biker "art" flick The Loveless, which marked the acting debut of Willem Dafoe and made for West Coast connections that led to a development deal with director/producer Walter Hill.
4. Made her solo directorial debut with 1987's Near Dark, which chronicled modern-day vampires and featured a massive truck explosion that announced her ability and desire to put action and violence on-screen.
5. Directed her own script for 1990s Blue Steel that Oliver Stone had recommended to producer Ed Pressman; married producer/writer/director James Cameron.
6. Made 1991's Point Break (with Cameron as executive producer), putting Keanu Reeves in his first action role.
7. Upon dissolution of her two-year marriage ("There is always a price for doing what you want, and I guess that price was my marriage"), reportedly had it written into her divorce settlement that Cameron would produce three of her subsequent movies.
8. Directed one segment of the Oliver Stone-coexecutive-produced miniseries Wild Palms (1993).
9. Directed Ralph Fiennes in 1995's ultraviolent apocalyptic Strange Days, which featured a scene in which the audience "experiences" the reality of a man who is raping and murdering a woman. The film was tagged "the most violent film ever directed by a woman." (And Bigelow gave directing a new definition at about this time when she posited that it was "a coordination of different elements in as organic a fusion as possible that's not impositional.")
10. Has developed into a self-styled auteur--the New York Times claimed that "the level of control she retains--from inception to final cut--is absolute and virtually unbending," but has not gotten a film off the ground for the last three years. Is still struggling to get financing for her Joan of Arc project, Company of Angels.
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Wolf Schneider is a senior editor at Movieline; Pat Troise interviewed Johnny Galecki for the September '97 issue of Movieline.