Sherry Lansing (born July 31, 1944 in Chicago, Illinois as Sherry Lee Heimann) is the former CEO of Paramount Studios.
Her mother, fled from Nazi Germany at age 17, and spoke no English when she came to the United States. In 1962 she graduated at University of Chicago Lab School. She pursued an acting career after graduating from Northwestern University. Dissatisfied with her acting skills, she wanted to learn more about the film industry from the ground up. She took a job with MGM as head script reader and worked on two successful movies, The China Syndrome and Kramer vs. Kramer.
This lead to an appointment, at age 35, as the first female president of 20th Century Fox. She was also part of a production comany run by Stanley Jeffe. In 1992, she was offered the chairmanship of Paramount Pictures' Motion Picture Group. During her tenure as Chairman of Paramount, the studio has produced such blockbuster hits as Forrest Gump, Braveheart, and Titanic.
As studio chief she foccussed on bottomline rather than marketshare, preferring to take less risks and make lower budget films than other studios. While this stratergy paid off for a long time in 2004 in the face of incresing flops she stepped down as CEO of Paramount.
She married director William Friedkin on 6 July, 1991.