What I Learned

Sherry Lansing
Philanthropist, former movie executive

When I was growing up, I loved to get lost in the movies. I saw that they could affect your emotions, they could affect the way you think or feel and could actually sometimes change lives or social legislation. At that time, women really had two options: teaching or nursing. Those are great careers, but my passion was to make movies. When I told people that was what I wanted to do, they laughed at me and said, "Who do you think you are?" It was like telling someone you wanted to go to the moon before anybody had gone to the moon. So I learned to keep my dreams a secret.

The day I graduated from college with a degree to teach math and English, I packed my bags and I came out here to Los Angeles. Eventually I got a job for $5 an hour reading scripts and worked my way up. By the time I was 35, I was running Fox. But I don't think I ever felt powerful. For me, it was really all about making movies. I felt the power resided in the director, the writer, the actor—the real creative people. My job was to give them the chance to fulfill their creative vision. So I didn't walk around saying, "Look at me, I got all this power." All I thought was, Look at me, I got all this work to do!

Eventually I left and formed a partnership with a man named Stanley Jaffe to make great movies ourselves because I felt that's where my creative heart was. We were lucky. We made "Fatal Attraction" and "The Accused"—movies that really affected the culture. But that wasn't the only reason I wanted a change. I woke up one day when I was 38 years old and working 900 hours a day with no time for a personal life, and I felt that I didn't have the quality of life that I wanted. I felt that if I produced movies, that I would have a more balanced life. And I don't just mean a boyfriend, which is where I was at that time. I mean travel. If Stanley and I had a successful movie, I could take off for a few weeks and he could cover the office. Then Stanley became the head of Paramount. I took over our productions and met my husband, William Friedkin, who is a director. At the same time, Stanley asked me to run Paramount. I thought the job would have more regular hours so I could be home for dinner with my husband and my stepchildren. And I said to Stanley, "I can do this, but don't expect me to be out every night on the town."

Life is constantly evolving and changing. My life is a search to find balance. So there I was. I just got so lucky at 47 years of age to meet my husband. It was just the greatest thing that ever happened to me in my life. And to get two wonderful stepchildren on top of it all and to really, with their mothers, help raise them. And so I took this big job, which I loved. I loved it for 12 years. I was home for dinner—maybe not as much as I sometimes wanted to be. But in my mid-50s, I started to say, "Well, I want my life to be more than just making money. I want my life to have some social relevance to it." I wanted a completely different life, and I even wanted more balance now that there was no need to be home for the kids. They were gone, out of college. I wanted to do good.

I quit and I started this foundation, which is dedicated to cancer research and to health. I want this third chapter to be a chapter of relationships and intimacy and the work of the foundation. It's the payoff for all those years.