Rob Cohen

At 75 years old, Rob Cohen has this physical status:

Rob L. Cohen (born March 12, 1949) is an American director, producer, and screenwriter of film and television.

Cohen began his career as an executive producer at twentieth century Fox, including The Wiz, The Witches of Eastwick, and The Light of Day, before focusing entirely on directing in the 1990s.

His directorial credits include action films such as xX and the first The Fast and Furious, as well as fantasy films such as Dragonheart and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.

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Early life and career

Robert Alan Cohen was born in New York, the son of Irwin and Beatrice Franz Cohen. He graduated from Newburgh, New York, in 1967, as president of the Punchinello drama club, founder of the JV golf team, editor of the Colonnade literary magazine, and a member of the National Honor Society. After graduating from Amherst College after two years focusing on a cross major in anthropology and visual studies, he attended Harvard University and graduated magna cum laude in the 1971 class. In 1970, his first attempt at filmmaking was a sponsored recruiting film for Harvard's Admissions Office, which became his senior thesis. He is Jewish.

Following graduation, Cohen landed in Los Angeles to work as a screenwriter for Martin Jurow, but he soon found himself unemployed after the director shifted out of state.

Cohen began working as a reader for then-agent Mike Medavoy after a six-month stint as a kennel boy at the Harvey Animal Hospital in West Hollywood to make ends meet. He distinguished himself by uncovering an unheralded script in a slew of neglected screenplays six weeks into his work with the International Famous Agency (now part of ICM). Cohen wrote in his coverage that it was "the greatest American screenplay and that it would be a major-cast, major-director film." Medavoy said he fought the piece steadly, with his own career in jeopardy, but that if he couldn't, he would have fired Cohen. It was purchased by Universal that afternoon for a record price, and it became the Academy Award-winning film The Sting (1973). Cohen still has the newspaper on the wall of his office, as this gave him his first name in Hollywood: "the kid who found The Sting."

Film career

Cohen has a reputation as a well-known screenwriter, producer, and director with more than 40 years of film and television work. Cohen, the first year of Fox Television's epic hit, M*A*S*H, was hired as Head of Current Programming, helping out with, among other things, Cohen's first year as 'the head of television movies at Fox'.' Barry Diller paid him a visit to see how he sold two TV films on the spot, as well as properties he had discovered in Fox's voluminous books. He reconstructed the feat at CBS under new CEO Philip Barry a week later. William Edwin Self, the Fox president, was dissatisfied that a junior employee had earned these positions without permission, but Cohen grudgingly awarded Cohen the title Vice President of TV Movies.

Cohen was recommended by Diller to his friend, impresario, producer, and record label founder Berry Gordy, who was determined to bring his Motown into the film market. Gordy and Mordy linked, and he was recruited to be both Executive Vice President and Chief of Motown's motion picture division.

Cohen went to work and created the first Motown film from scratch, a new phenomenon that had pounded African American Super Models, which he felt would be appropriate for Motown actor Diana Ross. He sold the box to Paraphrasedoutput, and the cameras in 1974 rolled on Mahogany in Chicago and Rome, and Billy Dee Williams, James Earl Jones, and Richard Pryor produced a unique film from Bill Brashler's The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings (1976) starring Billy Dee Williams, James Earl Jones and Richard Pryor. He hired John Badham, a young television director who was yet to be directed, to make his debut in the 1930s (Twenty years ago, he and Badham would team up again to produce a number of hit films at Universal Studios).

Cohen, who left Motown in 1978, went on to produce and direct films, including Miami Vice, Light of Day, The Witches of Eastwick, Ironweed, and The Wiz.

Rob Cohen, the former president of Keith Barish Productions, was elected vice chairman of the film studio on October 8, 1986, and before that, the company produced feature films in a partnership with Tri-Star Pictures.

Cohen transitioned from 1990 to full-time. Dragonheart, Daylight, and the Golden Globe award-winning film The Rat Pack were all well-reced by early 1990s films like Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, Dragonheart, Daylight, and The Golden Globe award-winning film The Rat Pack.

Cohen, who was 52, had become an action writer, directing the 2001 film The Fast and Furious. The film was a success, opening with $40 million in its first weekend and starring relative strangers Paul Walker and Vin Diesel.

Cohen co-founded The Fast and Furious in 2006 and became the first director of XXX.

Stealth, the science fiction action film that was a commercial disappointment and critical failure, was then directed by Stephen Moore in 2005.

He produced The Mummy: The Mummy, the third installment of The Mummy, grossing $403 million worldwide, and he directed Blumhouse Productions' The Boy Next Door, starring Jennifer Lopez in 2015.

Among other things, Cohen is also a producer of television commercials, having produced over 150 television commercials for services including Disney's Star Wars, Verizon, Ford, Mercedes, Mercedes, Saab, and Burger King.

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