Gary Barber

Biography

Gary Barber (born 1957 in Johannesburg) is a South African-born American film producer, best known for his time as chief executive of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. His career moved from professional accounting to independent production and then to running a major studio, which made him one of the more visible figures in Hollywood during the 1990s and 2000s.

Raised in a Jewish family in Johannesburg, he studied accounting at the University of the Witwatersrand and worked as a chartered accountant in South Africa and the United States, at Price Waterhouse. In 1982 he moved to the United States, where his brother Cecil had been living since 1979, and he became a U.S. citizen in the mid-1980s.

In 1998 he co-founded Spyglass Entertainment in Los Angeles with Roger Birnbaum, and the company produced titles such as True Romance and Memoirs of a Geisha. His biggest hit as a producer was The Tourist (2010), which took close to US$280 million at the worldwide box office. In December 2010 he became chief executive of MGM, which backed the James Bond film Skyfall alongside Eon Productions and Sony Pictures. In March 2018 he was removed from the post, five months after his contract had been renewed, and he received a settlement of $260 million. He lives in Los Angeles and also owns Thoroughbred racehorses.

Key films

• True Romance (1993), directed by Tony Scott, on which he worked as executive producer.
• The Count of Monte Cristo (2002), an adaptation of the Alexandre Dumas novel.
• Memoirs of a Geisha (2005), a large-scale drama about a geisha in prewar Japan.
• The Legend of Zorro (2005), a sequel to The Mask of Zorro starring Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta-Jones.
• Evan Almighty (2007), a sequel to Bruce Almighty with Steve Carell.
• The Tourist (2010), a romantic thriller with Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp and his biggest hit as a producer.