Scott Rudin is an American film and theatrical producer. He was born on July 14, 1958 in New York City, NY. He was raised in a Jewish family in the town of Baldwin in Long Island. He is openly gay. At sixteen, he started working as an assistant to theatre producer Kermit Bloomgarden and later on with producers Robert Whitehead and Emanuel Azenberg. While in college, he took a job as a casting director and ended up starting his own company. His firm cast several Broadway shows such as Annie (1977) for Mike Nichols. He also cast PBS’s Verna: USO Girl (1978) starring Sissy Spacek and William Hurt and the films King of the Gypsies (1978), The Wanderers (1979), Simon (1980) with Alan Arkin and Resurrection (1980).

Rudin moved to Los Angeles in 1980 and he was employed at Edgar J. Scherik Associates as producer on a variety of films like I’m Dancing as Fast as I Can (1981), the NBC miniseries Little Gloria… Happy at Last (1982) and the Oscar-winning documentary He Makes Me Feel Like Dancin (1983). Later on, he formed his own outfit, Scott Rudin Productions. His first film was Gillian Armstrong’s Mrs. Soffel  (1984). He then joined 20th Century Fox as an executive producer where he became the president in 1986. Years later, he worked with Paramount Pictures with Jonathan Dolgen whom he met at Fox.  He also had a deal with Tri-Star Pictures in 1992 but he soon moved back to Paramount. His deal lasted nearly fifteen years that ended in 2005.

When Scott Rudin left Paramount Pictures, he moved to Walt Disney Company’s Miramax Films after Bob Weinstein and Harvey Weinstein left to create a new independent film studio. He was an inspiration for Buddy Ackerman who was played by Kevin Spacey in Swimming with Sharks (1994). The movie The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) that he produced was originally considered by Paramount Pictures but turned it down. Disney’s Touchstone division produced it and it became a hit. He ranked #26 in 2002 and #18 in 2003 Premiere’s annual Power 100 List. In 2011, he ranked #3 of 50 influential people in The New York Observer article The New Power Gays.

Scott Rudin is one of the only 14 individuals who are an EGOT or those who have received at least one of all the four major entertainment awards – Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony. The other recipients in chronological order are Richard Rodgers, Barbra Streisand, Helen Hayes, Rita Moreno, Liza Minnelli, John Gielgud, Audrey Hepburn, Marvin Hamlisch, Jonathan Tunick, Mel Brooks, Mike Nichols, Whoopi Goldberg and James Earl Jones.