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Cast Archive: Richard D. Zanuck
Richard D. Zanuck
Birthday: December 13, 1934
Birth Place: Los Angeles, California, USA
Resides: United States
Professions: producer, executive
Also Credited As: Richard Zanuck, Richard Darryl Zanuck
Though born into Hollywood royalty, producer Richard Zanuck frequently acted like a maverick, tackling offbeat, seemingly unfilmable projects and spinning them into box office gold. Among his hits were such iconic pictures as "The Sting" (1973), "Jaws" (1976) and Driving Miss Daisy (1989). He began his career as head of production for his father, Darryl F. Zanuck, at 20th Century Fox, overseeing such films as "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" (1969) and "Patton" (1970), but lost his job after a spate of costly failures. Teaming with fellow Fox expatriate David Brown, he set up his own company and produced the aforementioned films, as well as The Verdict () and Cocoon (1985), the latter in partnership with wife Lili Fini Zanuck. His savvy carried over into the new millennium with hit films for Tim Burton including Alice In Wonderland (2010). Zanuck's pedigree and track record made him an enduring figure in the Hollywood history books.

Born in Los Angeles on Dec. 13, 1934, Richard Darryl Zanuck was the youngest of three children born to Darryl F. Zanuck, the legendary studio chief of 20th Century Fox, and his wife, Virginia Fox. His father's prominence in the entertainment business assured his son a storybook childhood, including birthday parties attended by Shirley Temple and play dates with stars like Jack Palance. However, the opulence of his family's lifestyle did not make up for an undercurrent of turmoil that flowed between his parents. The senior Zanuck was a notorious philanderer with a well-worn casting couch.

After studies at Harvard Military Academy and service in the U.S. Army, Zanuck returned to California to begin studies at Stanford University. While there, he began his tenure at Fox in the story department. By 1956, he was vice president of Darryl F. Zanuck Productions, and assisted his father with such hits as "Islands in the Sun" (1956), "The Sun Also Rises" (1957) and later, the epic World War II drama "The Longest Day" (1962). Two years later, he made his solo debut as producer on "Compulsion" (1959), a stark and adult courtroom drama based on the real-life Leopold and Loeb case, with Bradford Dillman and Dean Stockwell as the ersatz killers and Orson Welles as their defense attorney, a thinly disguised stand-in for Clarence Darrow. A modest success after netting Best Actor awards at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival, it was followed by two equally minor but pressworthy features, 1961's "Sanctuary," based on the novel by William Faulkner, and "The Chapman Report" (1964), which drew inspiration from the Irving Wallace novel about the Kinsey Reports.

By the time of the release of "The Chapman Report," which was drastically re-edited after complaints from the Legion of Decency, Zanuck had moved to the executive suites at Fox, where he served as head of production from 1965 to 1970. Under his aegis, the studio netted 150 Oscars, including Best Pictures for "The Sound of Music" (1965), "Patton" (1970) and "The French Connection" (1971), and oversaw such box office hits as Planet of the Apes (2001), "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" (1969) and "M*A*S*H" (1970). Unfortunately, these windfalls were offset by numerous misfires, including such costly failures as "Doctor Doolittle" (1967) and "Hello, Dolly!" (1969). Having nearly collapsed under the weight of production costs from "Cleopatra" (1963), Zanuck's father was forced to fire his son to appease stockholders. The younger man shouldered the potentially humiliating situation with dignity, citing his father as his most significant role model in the film industry.

A brief stint as senior executive vice president at Warner Bros. left Zanuck wondering if he was meant to work in motion pictures. However, his passion was rekindled after an encounter with David Brown, another former Fox executive whom he had befriended at the beginning of his career there. Together, they formed an independent company, Zanuck/Brown Productions, with a partnership with Universal Pictures, in 1972. Almost immediately, they scored with "The Sting" (1973), a period comedy about a pair of Depression Era conmen that reunited Zanuck with his "Butch Cassidy" stars, Paul Newman and Robert Redford. The film, netted seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and launched Zanuck/Brown as a serious contender in the movie industry.

Just as Zanuck differed from most movie producers by being present on his sets throughout the shoot, his company was set apart from others by virtue of its adventurous outlook. They took risks on films, hiring unknown directors, like Steven Spielberg, whose first feature, "Sugarland Express" (1974), was made with Zanuck and Brown. The pair remembered him when their director for an adaptation of Peter Benchley's thriller "Jaws" (1976) dropped out, and the resulting film was not only an Oscar nominee for Best Picture, but also a launching pad for Spielberg as a dominant force in the industry, as well as a turning point for 1970s cinema, along with "Star Wars" (1977).

Not every experiment worked - The Island (1980), based on another Benchley novel, was an expensive flop, as was "MacArthur" (1977) and the John Belushi-Dan Akyroyd comedy Neighbors (1981), but successes like The Verdict (), which netted another a Best Picture nod, and the Ron Howard fantasy Cocoon (1985) more than outweighed these misfires. The latter film was brought to Zanuck and Brown by the former's third wife, Lili Fini Zanuck, who became a partner in the company and one of its shrewdest executives. Brown and Zanuck eventually dissolved the company, though Brown and the Zanucks remained close. Brown would also serve as an executive producer on Driving Miss Daisy (1989) and Deep Impact (1998) and the two would share the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for their longtime successes.

Now producing with his spouse under the Zanuck Company umbrella, Zanuck scored with their freshman project, an adaptation of the Alfred Uhry play, "Driving Miss Daisy." Scores of companies passed on the script, citing the impossibility of box office returns for a film that centered on an elderly white woman and her black driver, but the Zanucks persevered. The result was their second Best Picture Oscar and a solid reminder of Zanuck's unflagging ability to find and produce a winning film.

The Zanuck Company's output in the 1990s and new millennium offered critical acclaim but modest returns; features like "Mullholland Falls" (1996), the Clint Eastwood mystery True Crime (1999) and Lili Zanuck's directorial debut, Rush (1991), were well-received by the press, if not always by the public. A remake of Planet of the Apes (2001) by director Tim Burton was a shift in fortunes, and signaled the launch of a long and fruitful relationship between Zanuck and the eccentric filmmaker that included Big Fish (2003), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), the Golden Globe nominee Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) and Alice In Wonderland (2010). All of these projects were produced under the Zanuck Company's production deal with DreamWorks, which was launched in 2000. Other Zanuck efforts during this period included "The Book of Eli" (2010), the Jim Carrey comedy Yes Man (2008) and the 2010 remake of "Clash of the Titans." In 2000, the Zanucks produced the 72nd Academy Awards ceremony, which was noted as one of the longest and most technically ambitious ever, due to its massive on-stage video towers and battery of mobile cameras.

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