David Geffen

Age: 65

WHAT HE’S KNOWN FOR
After lying his way into the William Morris mailroom at age 21 by supplying fake college credentials, Geffen showed an uncanny knack for spotting fresh sounds with chart-topping promise. Known ostensibly for nurturing overlooked talent, he had his share of fallings-out and is knocked by some for transforming the music industry into a bastion of money and greed.

He certainly cashed in, first on the emerging folk rock scene, representing newcomers Joni Mitchell and Jackson Browne. After snatching Laura Nyro from another agent, he brokered a deal with Columbia on her behalf and reportedly earned his first million by age 27. In 1971, Geffen and a business partner formed Asylum Records, making the Eagles a marquee name. He sold the label to Warner Communications for a reported $7 million a year later and founded Geffen Records in 1980, with John Lennon topping the roster. As hippies started shaving and wearing shoes, Geffen, too, followed the times, replacing singer-songwriters with blockbuster grunge bands Nirvana and Sonic Youth and hard-rockers Guns N’ Roses and Aerosmith.

Not satisfied as a music titan, Geffen took his sharklike focus to the stage and screen, producing the Broadway hits Cats and Miss Saigon and blockbusters like Risky Business and Beetlejuice. In 1994 he cofounded DreamWorks SKG with Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg, which they sold to Paramount in 2006 for $1.6 billion.

Geffen may have shaped the entertainment landscape, but these days he’s more known for how he doles out his riches—estimated at $4.7 billion by Forbes in 2007. Though he has been romantically linked to Cher and Marlo Thomas, he is openly gay. He is a major supporter of AIDS research, and in 2002 gave $200 million to U.C.L.A.’s Medical School. He is an avid art collector and owns one of the most highly regarded collections of postwar American art.

Geffen also isn’t shy about expressing his views on life and politics. He considers owners of iPods and other portable music devices to be guilty of copyright infringement. In 2002 he was a party in a lawsuit designed to overturn an easement of his land to provide access to the public beach in front of his Malibu home (the lawsuit was later dismissed). A legendary friend of Bill Clinton, Geffen raised $18 million for Bill Clinton and slept in the Lincoln bedroom twice, but but the president fell out of his favor when he pardoned financier Marc Rich for fraud and illegal oil deals, instead of American Indian activist Leonard Peltier, who many believe was wrongly convicted of murdering two F.B.I. agents. In February 2007 he told New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd that Clinton is “reckless” and that the ex-president and Hillary lie “with such ease, it’s troubling.”

WHERE HE’S FROM
He’s the son of Jewish émigrés from Borough Park, Brooklyn. His mother sold bras out of her home and called Geffen “King David” until he was an adult. Geffen ended up dropping out of the University of Texas at Austin.

WHERE HE’S GOING
The Los Angeles Times may be his next target. Toward the end of 2006, Geffen sold off part of his art collection, including Jackson Pollock’s No. 5, 1948 (to a Mexican-born financier for a record $140 million), Jasper Johns’ False Start, and Willem de Kooning’s Police Gazette, to raise an estimated $2 billion bid for the paper. The money was neither declined nor accepted, so his future plans are unresolved. —Beth Kwon