Bob De Niro

"In the early eighties, I’d begun collecting relationships. For instance, I reached out to Felix Rohatyn, the Lazard Frères banker who had almost single-handedly rescued New York City from bankruptcy in the seventies, and who was on the board of MCA and had Lew Wasserman’s ear. I called and asked to see him, saying, “I need no more than ten minutes of your time.” On my next trip to New York, I went to his office, shook hands, and placed my watch on his desk. Then I said, “I’d love to talk to you about how you saved New York, and also how you advise Lew—to learn from the Dean. And I’d love to be helpful to you in L.A. in any way I can.” All to get him talking and to show that I knew what he’d done and that I admired it and wanted to learn from it. After ten minutes, I said, “Thanks so much,” and stood to pick up my watch. Felix—and everyone else I used this stratagem on—asked me to sit back down. In this way I got to know Herb Allen, the head of Allen & Co., and Bob Greenhill at Morgan Stanley, and I’d always drop in on them when I was in New York—as well as on Mort Janklow and fifteen other book agents, a number of figures in the art world, and our clients Meryl Streep, Mike Nichols, Al Pacino, Sidney Lumet, Bob De Niro, and Marty Scorsese. The relationships outside entertainment would prove useful to CAA in the plans I was beginning to develop. They’d be our bridges to a wider world."

"Bullied as a child, I spent my life bullying back. My clients sometimes viewed me as a superhero, and I did try to play that role—swooping in to help anyone who was down or ill or just in need of advice, fighting for the underdogs. I thought I was one of the good guys. Yet I was increasingly visited by the doubt that troubles every superhero: Had I become a vigilante? Plenty of people saw me as just that—a hired gun who took the law into his own hands. But that verdict misses all the loyalty and the love. Bob De Niro summed me up pretty well. Someone once asked him, “Why don’t you leave Ovitz? He’s such a tough asshole.” De Niro said, “Yeah, but he’s my tough asshole.”"