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Sherry Lansing (born July 31, 1944 in Chicago, Illinois as Sherry Lee Heimann) is the former CEO of Paramount Pictures and the first woman to head a major studio.
Her mother fled from Nazi Germany at age 17, and spoke no English when she arrived in 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, after a stint at Columbia Pictures, 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 enjoyed its longest and most successful string of releases since the '30s. Under Lansing, the studio produced such blockbuster hits as Forrest Gump, Braveheart, and the highest grossing film of all time - Titanic (the latter two with Fox). Six of the ten highest grossing Paramount films were released during her tenure which included three Academy Awards for Best Picture. Overall, 80% of the films released by Lansing were profitable, a track record unmatched by any other long term studio management leader.
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. Viacom (which purchased Paramount in 1994) decided to split the company into two parts in 2004 and Lansing stepped down at the end of that year after an almost unprecedented twelve-year tenure atop Hollywood's legendary "Best Show in Town."
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 received the Academy's Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.
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