“A Nutless Monkey Could Do Your Job”: From Abusive to Angst-Ridden, 16 Memorable Studio Exec Portrayals in Film and TV

Nicolas Cage plays a real-life version of Adaptation screenwriter Charlie Kaufman in this film, directed by Spike Jonze. (Cage also plays “Charlie’s” twin brother, Donald, in the movie.) Charlie has been hired by studio exec Valerie Thomas (played by Tilda Swinton), a fan of Kaufman’s Being John Malkovich, to adapt Susan Orlean’s bestseller The Orchid Thief, but Charlie experiences writer’s block. Swinton and the rest of the cast earned a SAG Award nomination for best performance by the cast of a motion picture.

Damien Chazelle’s film stars an ensemble cast and chronicles their characters’ careers as Hollywood makes the switch from silent to sound films in the late 1920s. Jeff Garlin plays Kinoscope Studios boss Don Wallach in the film, while Diego Calva plays Manny Torres, one of Kinoscope’s employees, who has dreams of making it big in Hollywood. After a series of events, he ends up getting offered an executive job at Kinoscope, but finds that some of his duties perhaps weren’t what he anticipated.

In the eleventh season of the HBO comedy, which aired in 2021, Larry (Larry David) and his manager Jeff (Jeff Garlin) successfully pitch Netflix on a new show about Larry in his twenties. The show, titled Young Larry, would see the title character trying to kill his rich uncle so he could inherit his fortune while also trying to launch his stand-up career. Reid Scott plays the fictional Netflix executive, Don Winston Jr., who greenlights the project.

Constance Zimmer played the studio executive in the HBO series, which ran from 2004-11. Her character, Dana Gordon, also has a romantic dalliance with uber-agent Ari Gold (Jeremy Piven) in the series. Other studio execs during the show’s eight-season run were played by actors including Carla Gugino and Alan Dale. The 2015 theatrical film picked up the storyline from the show’s series finale, kicks off just days after the events of the finale, which found Gold mulling over and over to take over Time Warner as its new CEO. In the film, we learn that Ari has indeed accepted that role and wants his former client Vince (Adrian Grenier) to star in his first studio production, a contemporary take on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde called Hyde, which Vince insists on directing as well.

The Coen brothers’ film follows movie executive Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), who’s also known as the studio “fixer” whose job is to keep actors’ scandals out of the press. Mannix must leap into action when Baird Whitlock (George Clooney), the star of his studio’s movie Hail, Caesar! A Tale of the Christ, gets abducted. Brolin was nominated for the MovieGuide Awards’ Grace Award for most inspiring film performance.

Rob Reiner played Ace Amberg, the head of Ace Studios, in this limited series, which hailed from Ian Brennan and Ryan Murphy. Ace greenlights the movie-within-the-show, which is first titled Peg and then renamed Meg, which also features his own daughter, Claire (Samara Weaving), in a role. Later, when Ace has a heart attack, his wife, Avis (Patti LuPone), is put in charge of the studio.

With help from Walter (Jason Segel), the Muppets set out to raise money to save their theater. To do so, they decide to hold a telethon, pitching several networks, including the fictional CDE, where executive Veronica Martin (played by Rashida Jones) agrees to air the show if they get land a celebrity host. The Muppets end up kidnapping Jack Black and forcing him into the gig. (Incidentally, Jones also puppeteered the female trumpet player in the Muppet Orchestra, whom she named Dolores.)

William Holden portrays Max Schumacher, the network executive at the fictional Union Broadcasting System who oversees UBS Evening News. The plot kicks off when Max tells Howard Beale (Peter Finch), the program’s veteran anchor, that he will be out of a job in two weeks due to declining ratings. That leads to Howard’s on-air monologue/rant in which he famously declares, “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!”

While he’s not a studio executive, Al Pacino’s Marvin Schwarz still has the power to influence a career as the Hollywood agent to actor Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) in this Quentin Tarantino-directed movie. Pacino made the most of his brief time onscreen as Marvin, who has a brutally honest conversation with Rick in the opening minutes of the film that manages to convince the once big-time star that he’s now a has-been whose best career move would be to relocate to Italy and take roles in spaghetti Westerns. Pacino, and the rest of the cast, earned a SAG Award for best ensemble cast in a motion picture.

Robert Altman directed this Hollywood satire/mystery starring Tim Robbins as Griffin Mill, a studio executive who has been receiving death threats, which he suspects are coming from a screenwriter whose pitch he previously rejected. At the same time, Griffin is facing the possibility that he might be replaced by an up-and-coming executive, played by Peter Gallagher. The inside look at the inner workings of Tinseltown earned Altman an Oscar nom.

Tom Hanks plays none other than Walt Disney in this film, which follows the meetings between his character and Mary Poppins author Pamela “P. L.” Travers (played by Emma Thompson) as he tries to obtain the film rights to her story and the disagreements they had while developing the movie. During the process, he also uncovers some secrets about her past. Hanks was nominated for best supporting actor at the London Critics Circle Film Awards and received the Chairman’s Award at the Palm Springs International Festival for his performance.

When Jerry (Jerry Seinfeld) and George (Jason Alexander) meet with NBC to pitch their ill-fated television show, two of the execs they meet with are Russell Dalrymple (Bob Balaban), the fictional president of NBC, and Susan Ross (Heidi Swedberg). Russell later develops a crush on Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and quits NBC to join Greenpeace to impress her, after which the show falls apart. George, meanwhile, develops his own crush on Susan, and the two eventually get engaged — though (warning: 29-year-old spoiler alert coming!) she famously ends up dying from the toxic glue on their wedding invitation envelopes, much to his morbid delight.

Seth Rogen stars as Matt Remick, the newly installed chief of Continental Studios who describes himself as “the most talent-friendly studio executive in all of Hollywood.” The show features a slew of cameos, including Martin Scorsese, as it gives viewers an inside look at the moviemaking process.

Kevin Spacey plays Buddy Ackerman, described as “the biggest producer in Hollywood.” When Guy (Frank Whaley) lands a job as his assistant, he thinks he’s gotten his big break. But he soon finds out how abusive and cruel his new boss really is and decides to exact revenge — only to find out the truth behind Buddy’s abusive behavior and discover how far he’ll go to climb the Hollywood career.

Wearing prosthetics and a bald headpiece, Tom Cruise is unrecognizable in his role as studio executive Les Grossman, who is prone to having angry outbursts, dropping profanity-laced rants and making death threats as a way of motivating those who work for him. He also flings insults such as “a nutless monkey could do your job” and is willing to let one of his stars die for the insurance payout. The Ben Stiller-directed film focuses on a group of actors who are filming a movie set during the Vietnam War. But things go awry when they are dropped in the middle of a jungle and are forced to fend for themselves. Cruise’s Les is the studio exec frustrated with the film’s inexperienced director, whose threat to cancel the project leads to the jungle debacle. Cruise landed a Golden Globe nomination for his performance.

Two studio execs — R.K. Maroon (Alan Tilvern) and Marvin Acme (Stubby Kaye) — both meet dire ends in this live-action/animation hybrid. The death of Acme kicks off the mystery of the story, wherein toon character Roger Rabbit (voiced by Charles Fleischer) is framed for his murder. Private investigator Eddie Valiant (Bob Hoskins) reluctantly agrees to help Roger try to clear his name and find the real murderer.