David Geffen was was born on Borough Park, Brooklyn, New York, to Abraham and Batya Geffen. He has an older brother Mitchell. He started out in the music business as an agent, and soon became one of the top agents in the industry. Although his grades in school were generally poor, he credits his mother with teaching him his business skills, as she had her own store. He has a reputation as being the best friend you can have, but also the worst enemy--he had a very long, very public and very nasty feud with superagent Michael Ovitz. Misdiagnosed with a cancerous bladder in 1976 (it wasn't until 1980 that he found out that he did not in fact have cancer), he has since been a major contributor to many medical charities and foundations, and has had several buildings named after him because of his work in that area, such as The Geffen Playhouse at UCLA. He branched out from the agent business into music publishing, a record company and film production, and in 1990 he sold his company, MCA, for more than one billion dollars, making him one of the richest people in the entertainment industry (his wealth is estimated to exceed $2.6 billion).


Billionaire. Dated Marlo Thomas. Co-founder with Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg of DreamWorks SKG. Sits on USC School of Cinema-Television's Board of Councilors In 1980 he signed John Lennon to what would prove to be the latter's last recording contract. Same birth date as Mikhail Vartanov, Riccardo Fellini, King Harald V and Nina Simone A supporter of Leonard Peltier, whom he believes was wrongly convicted of the 1975 murders of two FBI agents, he said he became disillusioned by Bill Clinton's decision to pardon financier Marc Rich, instead of Peltier. This caused a rift between him and the Clintons, and led to his decision to endorse Barack Obama for president, instead of Hillary Rodham Clinton. Of Polish and Ukranian descent.