And if that's true, it's because I empathized.
Her name is Sherry Lansing.
He just kind of believed in me. The head of the studio left. They were going to make somebody else the head of a studio. I don't know what I'll do. And he said, 'Why can't you be the head of the studio?' And I said to him, 'Oh, there will never be a woman head of a studio.' What are you thinking? That was the first time I ever thought about it. He changed my life, and without him, I would never have the life I had.
Oh my god, I'm going to cry. That's my husband, Billy. Academy Award-winning director, and the only person that offered me unconditional love. No one's going to remember me. They're going to remember the movies. The only thing that lasts forever is the movies. The best is not yet to come because I've lost the love of my life, but it's still damn great.
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That's Dr. Hoffs. Much younger than when I started seeing him, but the same face and the same warmth. And you can tell just by looking at this picture what a kind and non-judgmental man he is. And I'm so grateful to him. I get emotional looking at this picture because he's no longer alive. And he changed my life and without him I would never have the life I had and have today.
How did he change your life?
Well, I grew up with a loving mother and father, but I grew up in a home where my mother was very critical out of kindness and out of wanting me to have a good life. And I grew up in an environment where a woman or a girl was not expected to work and was expected to get married and have two children. And from the time I was a child, all I wanted to do was work. And I didn't dream about getting married like the rest of my friends did. And so I'm afraid I grew up with a lack of self-esteem. And as I started to go through life, I made choices based on shoulds rather than really what I wanted to be.
And I remember getting married very young, 19, turning 20 years old, the end of my sophomore year in college, to a lovely man who should have been my first affair, my first love, whatever, because he's a very good person. And then getting divorced and then I remember thinking, I'm going to make the same mistake again. I'm going to marry somebody who's just going to look different. So I sought out therapy and I went to a doctor who was not a good psychiatrist in my opinion and in retrospect I think an even worse psychiatrist than I thought at the time. Because he said to me and I remember this clearly, 'When I'm done with you, you won't want to work. You'll just want to bake pies.'
And that's exactly right. What is I mean, it's shocking when I think about it. But I was young. It's like, yeah, that's the truth. And many other things like that. Many other things that were equally disturbing. But when you're vulnerable like I was, and you're getting a divorce and you really don't have a career. I was teaching, but I wanted to be in the movie business. And you really don't have much going for you and you don't have any money and you're trying to find your way. I looked at him like, well, he must know something I don't know. So, unfortunately, I stayed there with him listening to the different things for a year and a half. And that's because I was 24 years old. And so it took every ounce of strength I had to finally stop. But when I stopped, nothing had really changed in me. And I was scared. And so I kept trying to work. I kept dating. And I kept thinking, I got to figure out why I'm not doing well, why I'm not falling in love with the right people or person, whatever it is. And I went out on a date. This is a long way of telling you how I met Dr. Hoffs.
And maybe it's too much information, but I don't know how to shorten it. I went out on a date. Someone fixed me up with a psychiatrist of all things. And I remember thinking, well, this will be interesting because I'm going to hate this man because I didn't like the first guy that was a psychiatrist, but this was just a date. And after a couple of dates, he was just lovely. And I finally told him the story about this psychiatrist that I had gone to. And the look on his face was pretty much like the look on your face. He said, 'I am not allowed to say anything bad about this person, but you must go to a psychiatrist to correct this image of what analysis means.'
And he called right in my kitchen. It's a teeny little kitchen. You know, I had no money. I was a substitute teacher trying to get acting jobs, trying to be in the movie business, not doing particularly well. And I went to see somebody who then referred me to Josh. And I can remember when I walked into his office, almost within the first hour I knew it was different because he wasn't judgmental, because he wasn't critical, because he wanted to help me to be the best me I could be. And so Josh Hoffs is responsible, I'm getting emotional talking about it and I'm 81 years old now and when I saw him I was like probably 30, is responsible for believing in me to be the best me I could be, believing in me enough to let me grow into a person who had self-esteem, who wasn't ruled by shoulds, who knew what I wanted to do. And I don't know how to say it any better. I would never be who I am without him. I would never be happy. I would have never had a career. I would have never had the wonderful marriage and friends and just everything.
So when my team told me that you wanted to talk about a therapist who was a person believed in you, I was a little confused because I was blessed and lucky enough to grow up in an era where that was how most all therapists treated people. And so I couldn't understand why it was so profound. And then I started listening to the book about you. And I started to understand your mother's love for you, but her tough love for you. And I started to understand how you were very insecure. And you talk about having a low self-esteem. And so I want to understand even more because to me, of course, you walk into a room and a therapist is non-judgmental, but how does that, it's really profound what you're saying. How does that non-judgmental zone end up feeling like a belief in you?
Well, it is a belief in you. It's a belief that you'll make the right decisions that you have inside of you. Dr. Hoffs once said to me, it's repairing yourself. That analysis is repairing yourself. And that's what it was. My mother, she escaped from Nazi Germany. She only wanted the best for me. And she was wonderful, but she was very judgmental and very critical. And because she was happy as a wife and mother, she wanted that for me. And interestingly enough, my mother, I'm sure she believed in me, but my mother is my first role model and in a good way because my mother was very contradictory and I think everybody is, but she was especially contradictory. So here is a woman who only wanted her daughter to get, she didn't care if I went to college. She didn't care if I got good grades. She just wanted me to dress nice, to be pretty, to get married, to join the country club, to have 2.2 children, you know, because that was the world that she grew up in. It was a different time, you know, it really was a different time. But on the other hand, and this is why it's so contradictory and why therapy helped me so much. My mother was also, as I said, my first role model. Now, what does that mean? My father died when I was 9 years old.
My mother was 32 years old. She had sold dresses at Marshall Fields. So, she did not have a career. She was raising my sister Judy and me and I remember this so vividly, a few days after my father died, my father had been in real estate and he owned buildings and two men came into his office which was in a room pretty much like this, it was in his case it was in the basement and he had all these big ledgers there of the, I mean he was nicely successful, I don't want to exaggerate but he owned buildings and they had people paid rent and that's how we lived. And these two men came in and they looked at my 32-year-old mother who had two children to raise and they said, 'Margo, don't worry. We'll take over the business and we'll take care of you.' And she looked at them and I heard this. I was hiding in the staircase listening because it was like, who are these men that are coming in? And she said, 'No, you won't. You will teach me how to run the business and I will take care of my children.'
The woman you just said who wanted to be at home and belong to the country club.
Said that. So she's very contradictory. So let's think about that. So then she did and she was extremely successful in running the business and I would go with her. So she was my first role model.
But she didn't want that for you.
No. Because I'll tell you what happened. And again, I think it's the time, if she was alive today, had young children, you have to go back. I mean, you have to go back to a woman who escaped from Nazi Germany, who had terrible scars from that, who probably wanted a secure life, a safe life, didn't want to take risks, which I understand. But who also had a great joy of life. I mean, a great joy of life. I mean, I love my mother so much, I can't tell you. So, and one of the things that you get through analysis is you let go of any anger you had and you realize that the person was doing the best they could and you love them even more as I do about both of my fathers because what then what happened and I say both of my fathers. I adored my father who died when I was nine. But then my mother remarried when I was 12 and she married Norton Lansing who was a very successful businessman and she quit.
Quit, sold everything or he took it over.
He was in furniture manufacturing but she never wanted to work again. So that was saying no, no, we only do this if we have to. We don't do it for pleasure. Whereas for me, work is pleasure.
So then the woman who becomes Sherry Lansing, where do you think that drive you had to get to where you did came from? Because it didn't come from your mother.
I'm not sure genetically that... Could it have been your dad? Well, my dad just adored me. I mean, my dad had a heart condition. He'd be alive today if, you know, now they put stents in, they do bypass. None of that existed. He'd be alive today. But unfortunately he died at 42.
And all I remember is that my father adored me, which is I think how I learned to survive. You know, you have a critical mother, but a father that adored you. But I think my mother had great resilience. Look at what she did. So drive, you can have great ambition, which I think you're maybe born with or something, but if you don't have resilience, you can't make it. Because if you say to me, what are the key traits that somebody who's successful has? I don't know anyone who's successful who hasn't had an equal amount of failures as success, maybe more failures, but you learn from those failures, and you pick yourself up and you move forward, right? So my mother, look at my mother, 32 years old and she raises us, my two sisters, and then marries and her life was built on resilience. But what analysis teaches you or what Dr. Hoffs teaches me, I mean just looking at his picture, I hope I can take this because I'd like to keep it, you have more...
I have another one I want you to...
Oh wow. Oh my god. He did not look like, I mean he was very handsome.
He was very attractive. I can't tell you that's what I thought of when I was talking to him. But therapy of any kind, whether it's analysis, whether it's going to a psychologist, or even talking to your clergyman, a rabbi, whatever, is allowing you to dig deep into your own feelings and not to be ashamed to talk about them, not to be ashamed to say, 'I want a career. You know, I don't think I want children.' To say that when I was growing up, I mean, I thought they'd institutionalize me.
But that's what I want to draw down on. You're talking about the, this is the 1970s.
At a time when therapy was thought to be for mentally ill people.
So Sherry Lansing, the question I have that I've been wanting to ask you is how did you get past that stigma? You were being an insecure person, which you talk openly about. How did you not worry what other people would think of you going to therapy? Did you just not tell anyone?
That's a great question. I just think I knew I wanted help.
Did you tell your mom you went to therapy?
Was appalled. Didn't want to talk about it, you know. Was appalled. And I actually had to work like three or four jobs to pay for it. And I asked my father and mother for a loan and they wouldn't give it to me. They said, 'Come home. You'll be fine. You know, it's because you're in Hollywood. These crazy people, you know, come home.' I don't think I kept it a secret from people I was close to. I think the people that I was close to were introspective and maybe analytical and didn't think it was crazy.
Where had you heard about therapy being beneficial? You're in your early 30s.
From a very good friend of mine. A man named Ray Wagner was in therapy and I thought he was wonderful. I thought he was so open, like hugged everybody and I didn't get hugs from my mother and I hug everybody.
You know, and I hugged them because I never got hugs from my mother. It was hard for my mother to say I love you. Do you know it was hard for her to be physical. This is not her fault. It's the way she was raised. I really, it's so important to me that you understand how much I loved her and she did the best she could. But I'm telling you, in every meeting I get up, when we met I got up and I gave you a hug. That's the way I greet people because I wanted it so badly. And I remember this man and he was in therapy and I remember talking to him about it. And of course I had that very bad first experience. So it took me another four or five years till I met Josh. It's really important to me that we destigmatize any association with going to therapy because especially when I look at what is happening with kids today, you know, and the mental health problems that they have, I think it should be a course in school.
What belief about yourself took the longest to unlearn?
That I shouldn't be ashamed of my ambition.
Oh, that's good. I think that was probably it.
I didn't like the way I looked. I was extremely insecure about that. You know, so...
What can, may I ask what you didn't like because people talk about you as being so attractive.
I have no idea that. I mean, I had no self-confidence in my physical looks whatsoever. I mean, there are times I wanted to cover all the mirrors. It doesn't make any difference what anybody else thinks. It's what you think. Unlearning that I probably have never done. I mean, I probably, I was the tallest kid in the class. They called me 'Closer up there.' I was at the time I'd give anything if this was true today because it's not, too skinny, so they called me 'Sticks and Bones.' I'd give anything for that today, you know. And it's very interesting because I'm probably 10 pounds overweight.
But are you still insecure?
Of course. And but here's the thing. When I finished analysis, I remember saying to Dr. Hoffs, 'This is it. I mean, this is it.' I still get depressed. I still have days when I go, 'Oh my god, I can't walk out of the house.' But I have the tools to overcome it and to know it's my problem and to go forward. So anybody who tells you that they're not insecure or anybody who tells you that they don't have fear or that they don't walk into some rooms terrified. I was nervous to do this. I'm not now because you're so warm and easy to talk to. But I was like, I remember last night going, 'Oh, should I do this? What am I going to say?' You know, it's normal. But you learn that it's normal. You don't have to be ashamed of it. You don't have to be ashamed to be vulnerable. You don't have to be ashamed to be insecure. You don't have to be ashamed to not be the smartest person in the room.
So, here's what I want the audience to understand in this moment. I have no ability to relate to you based on how you became Sherry Lansing.
Nobody comes in fully formed. You know, you see someone walk in with confidence. They weren't born like that. They learned it. I mean some people are blessed with incredibly loving parents and some people overcome parents that are in prison, you know, are crack addicts and they become very successful. So a lot of it is getting help and admitting it. The other thing that I want to say that analysis or therapy or a priest or a rabbi, because I'm not saying it has to be that or if you're lucky enough to have a friend that likes to listen to you, you know, two hours a day, which I think most people would get sick of. There are no secrets.
Well, one of the things that I think we all say is I did this really bad thing. You know, I can't tell you what it is. I'm not keeping it from you. Nothing comes to my mind. But I remember saying, you know, I didn't tell the truth here or I did this or what. I mean, nothing serious. I don't want to make it. But you learn there are no secrets. Do you know? I mean, you learn that who you are is okay. You know, I was angry at this person. I said mean things or okay, fine. You were angry. You apologized. It's over.
Does that mean we share everything? What do you mean? There are no secrets.
No, you have the right. No, of course you don't share everything there. It's your life and you don't need to overshare. But I think what I'm trying to say is that there's nothing to be ashamed of.
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He just kind of believed in me. So, there was this key moment with Dr. Hoffs that I remember clearly. And it obviously affected my life. We didn't talk a lot about work because mostly we talked and then eventually we did, but mostly...
At this point you weren't Sherry Lansing. You were just an aspiring actress.
And no, by then I was probably reading scripts for $5 an hour for an independent producer. I think I had realized that acting wasn't for me. I was extremely uncomfortable being an actress. I didn't like being anybody other than myself and I was terrible at it. But I got very interested in what was going on on a movie set because I was fortunate to be cast.
Why were you so terrible at being an actress?
I can't be anybody other than myself and I have a Chicago accent. They wanted me to talk like this and I just hated being something other than myself. And that was the good news, you know. I mean, I have the most respect for actors and actresses because they can be sitting here having a conversation and someone says, 'It's time now.' And they burst into tears and I'm going, 'How'd they do that?' I mean, you know, and so I had the greatest respect for them.
So, you were saying that pivotal moment with Dr. Hoffs.
Pivotal moment with Dr. Hoffs in terms of the career was the head of the studio. This was when I was at Columbia. So, it was several years into my career and I was doing okay and happy and really thought if I never ever do any more than this, it's wonderful. I'm really happy. So, I didn't have a master plan. I never said I want to be the head of a studio because actually I said I will never be a woman head of a studio in my lifetime. I actually said that and I believed it. So what happened is that the head of the studio left and they were going to make somebody else the head of the studio and it was between me and another person. And I said to Dr. Hoffs, you know, Dr. Hoffs, I'm really nervous about this because if they make this person the head, I don't want to report to this person. It will be difficult. Blah blah blah, but I don't know what I'll do. And he said, 'Why can't you do it? Why can't you be the head of the studio?' And I said to him, 'Oh, there will never be a woman head of a studio. What are you thinking?' And he said, 'I don't know why you can't do it.' That was the first time I ever thought about it. Literally the first time I ever thought about it.
And I didn't get the job. I didn't get it. And I learned how to adjust, you know, and I think it was probably...
How did it feel when he said that to you?
Well, initially like he didn't understand the business that I could never be it. And then it stuck because by then I was starting to believe in myself. By then I was starting to develop self-esteem. By then I was starting to open my mouth up in meetings and not even be angry. I mean there's a famous meeting that was very formative in my life and there were like six men in the room and I was the only woman and they were trying to fix a movie and I gave a suggestion and the producer kind of ignored me like 'yeah yeah' and then they went around the room and like the fourth man there said exactly what I said and he went 'that's brilliant' and I looked at it and I went 'that is exactly what I said' but I didn't say anything because I think if I said anything I probably would have been fired, but you know, you're questioning the producer. So, I learned where to pick my battles. I want to be clear about that, which is very important. You can't fight all the time, you know. And the world is different now. This doesn't happen anymore. It really doesn't.
But picking your battles is still a good lesson.
Absolutely, 100%. So, I learned to pick my battles and I started to go, well, I was right. So he didn't hear me and so this person is getting the credit but you know it's okay because now the movie will be better which is really all I really cared about.
So am I understanding you to say that therapy may have helped you to be the great executive that you were?
100%. And I can tell you so many reasons. Number one where to pick your battles but that's really not the most important, to not be intimidated by anybody because you understand them.
Well, so someone yells a lot and you think, but really it's just a style, you know, and you start to learn that it's probably based on a lot of insecurity and that they're, you know, maybe yelling because they're insecure or because they had a tough mother or whatever it is, you start to understand people. And if you understand anyone, you can't hate them because you'll understand.
Say it again because that's so important.
If you understand anyone, you can't hate them because you understand the complexity of what made them.
And so for me, that was the key to being a good executive. So when people would come in to pitch a story, I felt their pain when I was saying no, because I'd actually been on that side of the desk, too. But I knew how much it meant to them to get the movie done. So I hope I was never cruel.
I heard you were the best no in town.
Well, that's very kind. And if that's true, it's because I empathized because I had tried to get movies made. I had been a producer before I was an executive. Well, both. I went first as a producer, then as an executive, then as a producer again, and then to Paramount, you know, as an executive for quite a while. I felt their pain. And also, I didn't know if I was right or wrong. I mean, I used to always say to people when I passed, look, this doesn't work for me, but when it becomes a big hit, you can tell everybody what an idiot I was for passing on it. You can tell anybody anything you want. It's fine.
Gwyneth Paltrow said about you, 'Sherry Lansing changed what power looked like in this business.' Reese Witherspoon said, 'There was only one woman running a major studio when I started out, and that was Sherry Lansing.' Jennifer Aniston called you a trailblazer and said, 'You remained one of the kindest and most generous people.'
Well, that makes me feel very good. I didn't know she said that.
But Kevin Huvane said, 'She led with empathy, but you knew not to mess with her.' [laughter] And then he said, 'She always worked really well with really difficult men.'
Because I understood them. I mean, that's the gift of therapy. That was one of the gifts. They didn't intimidate me. A lot of these really difficult men were what I would call mush faces underneath. They were really kind. They love their wives. They love their kids. Not all of them, but a lot of them. And it was a style. In order to get consensus, in order to not compromise what you want, you have to be able to understand the other person's point of view in order to get under it and change it. And if you just dismiss it, then you get nowhere. You have to be able to talk to people who disagree with you. And you have to be able to, when you're doing a movie, it is a collaborative process. You can't just say do it my way, that doesn't work. I find difficult men and difficult women because there are a lot of difficult women too, interesting. I mean they're interesting people and they have strong beliefs and you have to be able to understand their belief system and not be intimidated or frightened by it.
I want to talk about one of the men you said is someone who perhaps was the best to you.
Oh my god, I'm going to cry. That's my husband, Billy. So, oh boy. It's funny how you don't believe these emotions are going to come up at this time in your life. Oh, he looks so cute. So, my husband...
Academy Award-winning director.
Yes. But the kindest person in the world, the most brilliant person, a true genius, and the only person in my life that offered me unconditional love.
Which is the greatest gift anyone could give you. He loved me no matter what I did. And if you had asked, who was the person that most believed in you after I was successful? Because you know success, it's hard to sustain it.
And successful people all fear the loss of it. They fear, you know, you're one movie away from being a failure again. You know, whatever. I didn't meet Billy until I was 47. So I had been divorced from the time I was 26 to 47. And I had met many men. I was single. It was the women's movement. We were, you know, allowed to sleep with people and not marry them. We were allowed to get up and go home, whatever. And I'm not telling you that I didn't love anybody else because of course I did. I had good relationships. But he's the only person I ever wanted to marry because he's the only person that gave me unconditional love. When I was 30 years old, I went to the National Theater in Westwood to see a movie called The Sorcerer. And I went with my best friend at the time, Martha Luttrell. We were both probably working for $5 an hour doing, she was an agent, but you know, we were making no money. And I thought that The Sorcerer was the greatest film I'd ever seen in my life. I thought you could feel the sweat on the people and I wanted to make a movie like that. And that was my dream. And it was directed by William Friedkin. So I'm 30 years old. I think William Friedkin must be at least 20 years older than me because why should I be working for $5 an hour and I didn't really study him, you know? I mean, that's my fault that I didn't study directors, but I guess I was just trying to survive, you know, in my job and didn't really think about it until when I was 47. A friend of mine, we gave an Academy Award party. And he was sitting next to a girlfriend of mine who was married and she said, 'Oh, Sherry, you know Billy Friedkin.' And my mouth fell open. It was like I had Tourette's. And I said, 'You can't be Billy Friedkin. You're much too young and you're much too cute.' And he said, 'You can't be Sherry Lansing. You're much too young and you're much too cute.' And or beautiful, I think, was actually the word he used. And we got married three months later.
That had been a long time.
You fell in love with him before he knew it.
That's, well, I was in love with his talent. That's for sure.
But I didn't marry him for his talent. I married him for his soul.
So, Billy, well, first of all, I just have to brag on him. He was a genius. He was self-educated. He read more books and knew everything about music. He was the smartest person and also the funniest person and also the maverick of all mavericks and had a no-edit button and would say anything that came to his mind. And sometimes I go, 'How could you have said that? How could you have said that?' Because I'm like the good girl, you know, like don't say those things.
Yeah. Margot's daughter. But I loved it. I mean, secretly I loved it. And he's the only man that didn't try and change me, that didn't say, I remember saying to him I don't like to cook. He said, 'Who asked you to?' And every other man said, 'Well at least make dinner once or tomorrow.' 'Who asked you to?' And I said, 'And I really want to keep working.' 'Great.' And every time I would be with somebody, you know, they were in the business or not in the business, and I'd be working late, and I would like say, 'I can't come to dinner because I'm working late. I can't do this. I'm working late.' They would get angry. Billy would say, 'Of course, honey. Just stay as long as you need to.' He was not threatened at all. He liked smart women. He was not threatened by my success. I think he thought it was amusing. I mean, he didn't care one way or the other. You run a studio, you don't run a studio. So, what does it mean when someone gives you unconditional love? It means that no matter what you do, they will love you. And that's like unheard of almost. It means that you have a soft landing. I was never afraid of getting fired because he'd be there. He wouldn't have cared. It means that they're always on your side. They may not agree with you, but they're always going to be there to hold you. They're always going to be there to pick you up. You know, my girlfriend Martha and I used to have an expression when we were dating. And we would always call each other the next day, how was that date? How was this date? And there was an expression we used, 'He won't be there for the chemo.' Meaning, he won't be there.
Billy would have been there every day. And he was, I mean I fortunately haven't had that experience yet but I say yet and I hope never. But Billy died two and a half years ago and it's strange to say this, he had an extraordinary life and he was 88 when he died and he had just done a movie which is great, The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, and got great acclaim. He did not live to see it, but he had a full life and there was nothing that he was missing on his bucket list.
If he were here today, what would he say about why he loved you so much?
I honestly can't answer that. I don't know.
You didn't hear him say to people? Oh, he would always say, 'My wife.'
Of course. But I mean, I don't want, I mean, of course, I would...
But in private conversations.
I was the goodest person he knew. He thought I was very attracted to me. And...
Yeah, but think about there must have been a moment in your decades long marriage.
Oh, he said it to me every day. 'I love you.' He had my baby pictures around the house and he used to call me 'Lumphead' because you know when you're a kid, they put a little lump on top of your head that put your thing. And he would say, 'Look at the love. Look what the love did.' You know, Billy loved everything about me. I was very secure. He gave me what my parents didn't give me. He loved everything about me. I know this. I mean, I never lived in fear. I never thought he was going to cheat on me. I mean, I never thought that he was going to leave me. He literally, I mean, I did not give him unconditional love. I would say, 'Why are you wearing that shirt? You should change that shirt. It doesn't look good.' I mean, stupid things, you know. But he never said that, you know. He always thought, 'Oh, honey, you look so beautiful.' You know, 'Oh, don't touch your face. Don't do any cosmetic work. You look great.'
How old were you when you met him?
