Megan Ellison

Megan Ellison was one of the most high-profile of a new generation of Hollywood producers, whose stock-in-trade was intelligent drama created by and starring some of Hollywood's most respected names. The daughter of Oracle Corporation CEO Larry Ellison, one of the richest men in America, she built an impressive track record of films which did well during awards season, with director Kathryn Bigelow's "Zero Dark Thirty" (2012), Spike Jonze's "Her" (2013) and David O. Russell's "American Hustle" (2013) gathering her three Best Motion Picture of the Year co-nominations at the Academy Awards within the space of two years. In 2014 she became only the fourth person in the Oscars' history to be nominated for two such awards in the same year. Born and raised in California, Ellison had one brother, David, who also became a successful Hollywood producer. She studied film at the University of Southern California for a year and made her first foray into film production in 2006 when she offered to fund the next project of "Loving Annabelle" writer and director Katherine Brooks. Funded by her father, "Waking Madison" (2010) was produced on a budget of 2 million dollars, the first in a trio of low-budget, low-profile films she would be involved with before her first critical and commercial success with the Coen Brothers' remake of the classic western "True Grit" (2010). Her first real success came following the founding of her own Annapurna Pictures company, with Paul Thomas Anderson's controversial religious drama "The Master" (2012) and Bigelow's fact-based hunt for Osama Bin Laden thriller "Zero Dark Thirty" (2012) among its earliest releases.