Harvey Weinstein

Harvey Weinstein is an American former film producer and studio executive. Born on March 19, 1952, in New York City, he grew up in Queens and attended the University at Buffalo. In the 1970s, he and his brother Bob Weinstein worked in concert promotion before moving into film distribution and production. The brothers co-founded Miramax in 1979, naming the company after their parents, Miriam and Max.

Miramax became one of the most influential independent-film companies of the late twentieth century. Under the Weinsteins, the company released and promoted films including Sex, Lies, and Videotape, The Crying Game, Pulp Fiction, Heavenly Creatures, and Shakespeare in Love. The studio became known for aggressive awards campaigning and for bringing independent, foreign-language, and specialty films into wider commercial and awards-season circulation. Weinstein won the Academy Award for Best Picture as a producer of Shakespeare in Love. He also worked on stage productions and received Tony Awards connected to Broadway projects including The Producers, Billy Elliot the Musical, and August: Osage County.

After Miramax was sold to Disney and the brothers later departed, Harvey and Bob Weinstein founded the Weinstein Company in 2005. The company released or backed films such as The King's Speech, Silver Linings Playbook, Django Unchained, The Imitation Game, Carol, Lion, and Wind River, with Weinstein often credited as producer or executive producer. His career in the film industry effectively ended in 2017 after extensive reports of sexual misconduct allegations. He was dismissed from the Weinstein Company, which later filed for bankruptcy, and he was expelled by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.