Who is Hollywood's Biggest Hack? Most Wanted Actor? Most
Deranged Director? More than 50 of the industry's top
power brokers dish out the honors in an Exclusive Radar Poll
Mike Ovitz is history. Barry Diller is playing matchmaker. Tom Cruise is an unemployed stay-at-home dad. So who are Hollywood's new gods and monsters? To find out, we dispatched a dozen well-connected reporters to interview the industry's remaining heavy hitters. Our crack team spent weeks abusing their expense accounts on hundreds of surreptitious phone calls, closed-door conversations, and boozy lunches at the Ivy and the Palm. Eventually we convinced more than 50 top power players to participate in our survey: studio execs, high-level agents from every major firm, and dozens of A-list producers, directors, managers, screenwriters, and publicists. These are people who have run studios, released blockbusters, won Oscars—and for once, nobody wanted top billing. So to assure their cooperation we promised them full anonymity, stroked their assistants' egos, plied them with liquor, and spent countless hours on hold (they love that). Then we hit them with the questions even their personal trainers are too afraid to ask. Who is Hollywood's Most Demonic Actor? What director drives his casts to tears? Below, the results of our first annual Hollywood survey.
Crowe
Winner:Russell Crowe
The winner in our first category is a no-brainer (in more ways than one). A vast majority of respondents instantly fingered the Aussie thug, who tackled a British TV producer in 2002, flipped off a camera-toting student on the Princeton set of A Beautiful Mind, and hurled a telephone at a defenseless hotel clerk during his Cinderella Man press tour. “Some incident can occur and he won’t show up on set for the next week—and you’re screwed,” says one producer with a sigh. “Russell is an unhappy guy,” adds an ex studio head. “His process is difficult. You have to talk him through everything, and he always has an opinion. He thinks he’s smarter than everybody else.”
Honorable Mention:Lindsay Lohan
While she got high marks for talent, the actress’s hard-partying ways raised eyebrows among many respondents, who noted her propensity to call in “sick” after a particularly long night. After she failed to show up on the set of her latest pic, an exec shot her a scathing memo in which he wrote, “We are well aware that your ongoing all-night heavy partying is the real reason for your so-called ‘exhaustion’.”
Honorable Mention:Jim Carrey
“Jim has been a nightmare on his last couple of pictures,” says a leading producer. “Not coming out of his trailer, wanting to control every element, rewriting the script.” This summer alone, two big-budget Carrey vehicles—Used Guys and Believe It or Not—were returned to development hell back-to-back, causing speculation that his oddball reputation could be endangering his career. “He’s depressed and weird,” says one former studio prez (in fact, Carrey told 60 Minutes in 2002, “I was on Prozac for a long time … it may have helped me out of a jam for a little bit”). A marketing exec who also cast a vote for Carrey explains: “Most comics are insecure people who aren’t funny in real life.” But judging from Fun With Dick and Jane, he’s also not always funny on-screen.
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