Robert Evans (film producer)
|
|
Robert Evans is a film producer best known as the producer of Rosemary's Baby, Love Story, The Godfather and Chinatown.
Evans was born Robert J. Shapera in New York on June 29, 1930 . He was spotted by Norma Shearer "hanging around the pool" at the Beverly Hills Hotel in the mid-1950's; she successfully touted him for the role of Irving Thalberg in Man of a Thousand Faces (1957). In the same year Evans also caught the eye of Darryl F. Zanuck, who cast him as a bullfighter in Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises (1957). About this period, Evans writes, "I was sure of one thing: I was a half-assed actor."
He was, however, determined to become a producer; before launching his first picture he was hired by Charles Bluhdorn, head of the Gulf + Western conglomerate, as part of a shakeup of Paramount Pictures. At the time Paramount was the eighth largest studio in Hollywood: after successes like Rosemary's Baby (1968), Love Story (1970), The Godfather (1972) and Chinatown (1974), they became the largest.
Unsatisfied with his financial compensation, he left Paramount to produce his own films. Evans was convicted of attempting to buy cocaine and later involved tangentially in a murder case. When Stanley Jaffe was hired to run Paramount, he gave Evans his office back and he continues to produce motion pictures as well as an animated series.
Evans is considered a noted playboy and raconteur, and is a close friend with Jack Nicholson. He has been married six times: his wives included Sharon Hugueny, Camilla Sparv, Ali MacGraw, Phyllis George, Catherine Oxenberg , and Leslie Ann Woodward. He has one son from his marriage to MacGraw.
Autobiography
- The Kid Stays in the Picture (1994)
External links
Roberts Evans (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0263172/) from the Internet Movie Database