Creative Artists Agency
Ovitz founded Creative Artists Agency in 1975 along with fellow William Morris Agents Ron Meyer, Bill Haber, Rowland Perkins, and Mike Rosenfeld. Borrowing only $21,000 from a bank, the agents rented a small office, conducting business on card tables and rented chairs, their wives taking turns as agency receptionist.
Under Ovitz's direction, CAA quickly grew from a start-up organization to the world’s leading talent agency, expanding from television into film, investment banking, and advertising. Ovitz was known for assembling “package deals”, wherein CAA would utilize its talent base to provide directors, actors and screenwriters to a studio, thus shifting the negotiating leverage from the studios to the talent. As CAA rose in stature Ovitz became one of the most powerful men in Hollywood. Promoted to President, then later to Chairman of the Board, his roles at CAA were numerous. He served as talent agent to Hollywood actors such as Tom Cruise, Dustin Hoffman, Kevin Costner, Michael Douglas, Sylvester Stallone, and Barbra Streisand, as well as directors such as Steven Spielberg, Barry Levinson, and Sydney Pollack. Ovitz also provided corporate consulting services, helping negotiate several major international business mergers and deals including Matsushita’s acquisition of MCA/Universal, the financial rescue of MGM/United Artists, and Sony’s acquisition of Columbia Pictures. His signing of Coca-Cola as a CAA client from agency McCann-Erickson had a significant impact on the advertising industry. He 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.
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