Brian Grazer (born July 12, 1951 in Los Angeles, California) is an Oscar and Emmy Award-winning American film and television producer who founded Imagine Entertainment with partner Ron Howard. Together they have produced many acclaimed films, including A Beautiful Mind and Apollo 13.
Grazer also produced the 1994 film The Cowboy Way, the live-action version of the holiday classic How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (2000), Spike Lee's 2006 crime-thriller Inside Man and "American Gangster"(2007) which has been nominated for 2 oscars. He is the executive producer of 24 and Arrested Development.
Grazer appeared as himself in the 1998 "When You Dish Upon a Star" episode of The Simpsons.
In March 2007, Grazer was slated to guest edit a special Sunday section of the Los Angeles Times before the newspaper's publisher cancelled its press run in wake of a scandal that ultimately led to the resignation of editorial page editor Andrés Martinez . In May 2007, Grazer was listed among Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in The World.
According to the June 29/July 6, 2007 issue of Entertainment Weekly, Grazer filed for divorce from his third wife, novelist and screenwriter Gigi Levangie Grazer, on June 8, citing irreconcilable differences after nearly ten years of marriage. He had filed for a legal separation in April 2006 blank">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/19/AR2006041900357.htmlhttp://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-grazers22apr22,1,2563139.story?coll=la-headlines-entnews, but the couple reconciled soon after. They have two sons, Thomas and Patrick.
On "The Dream Team", the July 15th, 2007 episode of _Entourage, Grazer made a brief cameo appearance as himself.
Brian Grazer has been making movies and television programs for more than twenty years. As both a writer and producer, he has been personally nominated for three Academy Awards, and in 2002 he won the Best Picture Oscar for A Beautiful Mind. In addition to winning three other Academy Awards, A Beautiful Mind also won four Golden Globe Awards (including Best Motion Picture Drama) and earned Grazer the first annual Awareness Award from the National Mental Health Awareness Campaign. In 2002, Brian produced 8 Mile, starring Eminem, which received numerous critical accolades. Its opening weekend, the film grossed $51.2 million dollars (the highest ever for an R-rated non-sequel). Over the years, Grazer's films and TV shows have been nominated for a total of 39 Oscars and 27 Emmys. At the same time, his movies have generated more than $10.5 billion in worldwide theatrical, music, and video grosses. Reflecting this combination of commercial and artistic achievement, the Producers Guild of America honored Grazer with the David O. Selznick Lifetime Achievement Award in 2001. His accomplishments have also been recognized by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, which in 1998 added Grazer to the short list of producers with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. On March 6, 2003, ShoWest will celebrate Brian's success by making him the recipient of their Lifetime Achievement Award. In addition to A Beautiful Mind, Grazer's films include Apollo 13, for which Grazer won the Producers Guild's Daryl F. Zanuck Motion Picture Producer of the Year Award as well as an Oscar nomination for Best Picture of 1995, and Splash, which he co-wrote as well as produced and for which he received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay of 1986. Among his other films are Cinderella Man, Inside Deep Throat, Fun with Dick and Jane, Friday Night Lights, The Da Vinci Code, The Inside Man, Tru Blu, Flight Plan, Magnum P.I., The Missing, The Cat in the Hat; Intolerable Cruelty; Blue Crush; Undercover Brother; The Grinch; Nutty Professor; Liar, Liar; Ransom; My Girl; Backdraft; Kindergarten Cop; Parenthood; Clean and Sober; and Spies Like Us. Grazer's television productions include 2003's Emmy Outstanding Drama Nominee, Golden Globe Best Television Series - Drama Winner and PGA award winning 24, NBC's Mismatch, Fox's Arrested Development, ABC's The Big House, the WB's Felicity, ABC's SportsNight, as well as HBO's From the Earth to the Moon, for which he won the Emmy for Outstanding Mini-Series. Grazer began his career as a producer developing television projects. It was while he was executive-producing TV pilots for Paramount Pictures in the early 1980s that Grazer first met his longtime friend and business partner Ron Howard. Their collaboration began in 1985 with the hit comedies Night Shift and Splash, and in 1986 the two founded Imagine Entertainment, which they continue to run together.
