Who Is Michael Ovitz?

by Michael Ovitz

I went to Rupert Murdoch’s house for lunch once, and, always looking for an edge, asked who his internist was. When he said he didn’t have one, I immediately made an appointment for him with the head of internal medicine at UCLA. He got great care and became a donor to the institute. Years later, in the early ’90s, I had a problem when one of our top stars had been caught on video being chased by a disgruntled husband. It seems the star had slept with the guy’s wife on one of his films. A Fox entertainment show was planning to run the video, and our client, who was also married, was very upset. I called Rupert and explained the situation and said, “I would be eternally grateful if this problem went away.” He said, “Michael, I cannot interfere with any of our shows or magazines—you better than anyone should understand that.” He paused, then added, “But I will look into it.” He called back the next day and said, “We have looked high and low for any such video in the Fox library, and we simply cannot find it.” Then he hung up. I owed Rupert forever after that, and contributed to every charity and political candidate he asked me to.