THE GOODBYE GIRL

For about seven minutes. [Laughs] I never felt I was a trailblazer, or any of those things. After that initial moment of walking into my office, and knowing that it had been Darryl Zanuck's, I just thought, Boy, I have a lot of work to do.

The front-page headline in The New York Times read: SHERRY LANSING, FORMER MODEL, NAMED HEAD OF FOX PRODUCTIONS.

Today there would be huge class-action suit about that. [Laughs] I thought, God, I've done every single job within the studio system, and they've just eradicated all these years of work.

What was it like being one of the few women executives in the industry back then?

Before I became head of 20th Century Fox, I was at MGM. I got promoted to senior vice president, and I went to the head of the studio and I asked for a raise, to be equal to the guy who had the same job, and I was told that I was earning quite enough money for a single woman. He said to me, "Look, we have to pay him more because he has a family to support." I have to say, at the time, I accepted that.

You did?