The 50 Smartest People in Hollywood

[Mira]

Power Lists are so over. Magazines, including EW, have done them for decades, but as way of digging deep into Hollywood's DNA, "power" has become sort of beside the point. "Power" just tells you who's in charge. It doesn't tell you who's shaking things up. So EW decided to go in search of the people who are rocking the industry's world this year, the people with ideas – innovative, creative, dangerous, renegade ideas – who are changing the way movies are made. We went looking for the 50 Smartest People in Hollywood.

Below are the results of three months of constant research, hundreds of hours of conversations with the brightest minds in the industry, and weeks of heated debate. We started with a list of more than 300 contenders, and it proved surprisingly hard to chop them down to a trim 50. We had to establish strict criteria to determine who would – and who would not – make the cut. Here were our rules:

1) Every person on the list had to be smart not just in general, but smart right now. They had to be leading the industry forward in some way, today.

2) The list would be about the movie business only. (We'll do a Smartest People in TV list, too, next year).

3) The list would represent a broad range of intelligence in the movie business – not just the suits and the stars, but the composers and the costume designers, too.

4) "Smart" could mean many things. It encompasses books smarts and street smarts, financial genius and emotional intelligence. We weren't interested in IQ. What mattered was the originality of each person's thinking and the reach of their ideas beyond the borders of their own careers.

5) At 50 names, the list could not possibly include every smart person in Hollywood. Each person on this list needed to help paint a portrait of where movies are today and where they're headed. Each person on this list tells a different story about the movie business today. They are all smart, certainly, but they also symbolize, collectively, Hollywood now.

6) We ranked them first, and primarily, by their overall impact on the industry this year, and then factored in the influence of each person within their own profession. It allows for a diverse and surprising list, where a cinematographer (Emmanuel Lubezki) can take the #24 slot, while an Oscar winning director (Michael Moore) can come in below him at #27. It will also give you, we're sure, plenty to argue with us about.

We hope you're happy to see a few familiar faces rewarded on this list and are intrigued by the people you've never heard of. You'll find the complete package – with #5 entry Will Smith on the cover – on newsstands this week and, of course, here on EW.com, along with a quiz to test your Hollywood IQ. (Yes, you'll be graded, but we won't tell anyone your score.) Feel free to tell us how brilliant or idiotic our choices on the comments section below. And make sure to tell us who you'd nominate as one of the 50 Smartest People in Hollywood. We'll take it under advisement.

Entertainment Weekly's 50 Smartest People in Hollywood:

1. Judd Apatow, director/writer/producer
2. Steven Spielberg, director/producer
3. James Cameron, director/producer
4. Ari Emanuel, partner of the Endeavor Agency
5. Will Smith, actor/producer
6. Meryl Streep, actor
7. Peter Rice, president of Fox Searchlight
8. Tyler Perry, actor/director/writer/producer
9. David Heyman, producer
10. John Knoll, visual-effects supervisor of Industrial Light & Magic
11. Brian Grazer, producer
12. Dick Cook, chairman of the Walt Disney Studios
13. George Clooney, actor/director/producer
14. Jerry Bruckheimer, producer
15. Amy Pascal, co-chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment
16. Peter Jackson, director/producer
17. Will Ferrell, actor/producer
18. Robert Zemeckis, director
19. Tom Rothman, co-chair of Fox Filmed Entertainment
20. Ben Stiller, actor/director/producer
21. Johnny Depp, actor/producer
22. Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO of DreamWorks Animation
23. Brad Bird, writer/director
24. Emmanuel Lubezki, cinematographer
25. Zack Snyder, director
26. Stacey Snider, CEO of DreamWorks SKG
27. Michael Moore, documentarian
28. Paul Greengrass, director
29. J.J. Abrams, producer/director
30. Jodie Foster, actor/director
31. Kathleen Kennedy, producer
32. Thelma Schoonmaker, editor
33. Angelina Jolie, actor
34. Sacha Baron Cohen, actor/writer/producer
35. Tim Palen, co-president of film marketing for Lionsgate
36. Modi Wiczyk, co-CEO of Media Rights Capital
37. Guillermo del Toro, writer/producer/director
38. Diablo Cody, screenwriter
39. Mary Zophres, costume designer
40. Jeff Skoll, founder of Participant Productions
41. Stefan Sonnenfeld, president of Company 3
42. Daniel Battsek, president of Miramax Films
43. Beth Swofford, agent at CAA
44. Roderick Jaynes, editor
45. Cate Blanchett, actor
46. Jeff Walker, Comic-Con impresario
47. Amy Powell, senior vice president of interactive marketing at Paramount
48. Gustavo Santaolalla, composer
49. Sarah Polley, actor/writer/director
50. Ben Affleck, actor/director/writer/producer

The 50 Smartest People in Hollywood | Movie Biz | Hollywood Insider | EW.com

by what standard did some of these people make the list?

[nycgirl]

um I don't see Brit Brit on this list. I demand a recount.

[Anne2007]

I don't understand why Angelina is number 33 and our Cate 45. I want a new list.

[HWBL]

Ah, I see it's only about THIS year. Otherwise they would've been
super stupid not to include the likes of, yes, my decrepit darling
Warren Beatty, who is genereally known to be one of the most
extremely intelligent and influential people in Tinsel Town to this day.

[arie_skop]

Originally Posted by Anne2007

I don't understand why Angelina is number 33 and our Cate 45. I want a new list.

I'm stunned as to how Angelina made this list. This woman used her looks and sex talks to become a celebrity - she isnt someone I would call smart.

[KristiB]

Ben Affleck made the list but not Matt Damon??

[sputnik]

i don't dislike her and i don't think she's dumb but i don't think angelina should be on the list. i'm sure she's smart and media-savvy for sure, but not top 50 smart people list material either...
she seems serious about her charity work, but to hear her speak it's the typical liberal guilt/white man's burden of the 3rd millenium bullshit that most people spew. which is all well and good and that's what makes the world turn and international organisations work but it's nothing new, insightful or particularly intelligent.

[Mira]

Basically that's what I thought about Warren Beatty, Matt Damon, etc., and including Ben Affleck and Angelina Jolie without people like that. Who the hell compiled this list anyway?

[sparkly]

I don't understand why Carrot Top wasn't on the list? Now I'm devestated and I DEMAND they re-do this list!!!!

[lurkur]

Huh? What did Will Smith do this year that was smart? If anything, his dabbling with the $cientologist$ is going to kill his career. And Meryl Streep just had a huge flop with Lions for Lambs, not to mention, like Will Smith, paired up with poisonous Tom Cruise. They need to give at least a blurb on what these people did that was so smart.

[Thalia]

Maybe they should have shot for The 25 Smartest People instead... intelligence is kind of at a premium in a town where Will Smith and Angelina Jolie are considered veritable Rhodes Scholars.

Having said that, I'd like to join in the righteous indignation. How in the hell did some of these fuckwits beat out Cate? Also, the re-animated corpse of Stanley Kubrick could lay the smack-down on all these people.

[Fluffy]

Originally Posted by sputnik

i don't dislike her and i don't think she's dumb but i don't think angelina should be on the list. i'm sure she's smart and media-savvy for sure, but not top 50 smart people list material either...
she seems serious about her charity work, but to hear her speak it's the typical liberal guilt/white man's burden of the 3rd millenium bullshit that most people spew. which is all well and good and that's what makes the world turn and international organisations work but it's nothing new, insightful or particularly intelligent.

She doesn't strike me as smart either. Driven? Yes. Smart? Not so much.

[Chalet]

Interesting that there are only about 12 women on the list. I'll agree with Jody Foster because she is intelligent. The rest are fairly insufferable.

[dangerous]

Originally Posted by nycgirly101

um I don't see Brit Brit on this list. I demand a recount.

I KNOW. The absurdity.

I hate these lists--I don't agree with most of them.

[arie_skop]

Yeah Britney is the most smartest when it comes to writing a manual of how to lose your kids and ruin a music career.