Raised on Manhattan's upper west side (his father was a dentist with a thriving practice in Harlem), Evans began his show-business career as a teenage radio act or. After flopping in his first attempt at movie acting, he took a job promoting sales of ladies' slacks for Evan-Picone, the clothing company founded and run by his brother. Some years later, Norma Shearer spotted him hanging around the pool at the Beverly Hills Hotel; she successfully touted him for the role of Irving Thalberg in Man of a Thousand Faces. In a New York nightclub, Evans also caught the eye of Darryl F. Zanuck, who cast him as a bullfighter in The Sun Also Rises. By the end of the fifties, Evans writes, "I was sure of one thing: I was a half-assed actor." He determined to recast himself as a producer. Before launching his first picture, though, he was hired by Charles Bluhdorn, head of the Gulf + Western conglomerate, as part of a shakeup of Paramount Pictures.

Within months Evans was head of production. In the late sixties and early seventies he became the quintessential "new Hollywood" executive: slickly packaged productions like Rosemary's Baby, Love Story and The Godfather revived Paramount. (The latter film and Chinatown are the artistic highlights of Evans' Param ount career, though the amount of credit he deserves for them has been debated for decades.) Eased out of Paramount, he saw The Cotton Club turn from a musical "Godfather" into a fiasco of front-page proportions. Evans righted his career with a new Paramount deal in the nineties.
Had one sister, Alice. Parents: Archie and Florence. Archie ran one of the first racially integrated dental clinics in the country. His older brother Charles started a women's clothing line, which was the source of much of Robert's money. His autobiography, "The Kid Stays in the Picture", printed in 12 languages, and its film version premiered at Sundance Film Festival, Jan., 2002. Brother of producer Charles Evans Was the basis for the Robert Vaughn character in Blake Edwards's S.O.B.. His 1998 marriage to Catherine Oxenberg lasted only ten days. Was the inspiration for the Stanley Motss character played by Dustin Hoffman in Wag the Dog. Hoffman emulated Evans' work habits, mannerisms, quirks, his clothing style, hairstyle, and wore large square-framed eyeglasses. After seeing the film, Evans reportedly said, "I'm magnificent in this film!". One child, with Ali MacGraw, actor/director Josh Evans. His luxurious Beverly Hills estate, "Woodland," once belonged to screen legend Greta Garbo Celebrity attorney Robert Shapiro celebrated his 50th birthday at the estate Henry Kissinger played tennis with champ Jimmy Connors at the estate where Kissinger was a frequent VIP guest Attended Henry Kissinger's 50th birtday party at New York's Harmony Club in 1973 Was offered the role of Monroe Stahr in the biopic The Last Tycoon (inspired by Irving Thalberg) but declined. Coincidentally, Evans earlier played Thalberg in his film debut Attended Super Bowl (I) with friend Clint Eastwood in 1967 Accompanied Raquel Welch to Super Bowl (X) at Miami's Orange Bowl where eleven cameras were simultaneously shooting live crowd and football scenes for his movie Black Sunday Declined offers to produce then future blockbusters Airport, The French Connection, and Jaws. Apart from his ex-wives, has been romantically linked with such beauties as, Ava Gardner, Grace Kelly, Lana Turner, Margaux Hemingway, Cheryl Tiegs, Beverly Johnson, etc. According to his book he was contacted by Sharon Tate and asked to be her houseguest on the evening she was killed, but he had to decline. She then invited Jay Sebring. He has suffered three near-fatal strokes. Is very close friends with next door neighbor and former Guns and Roses guitarist Slash. After shepherding many hits such as Love Story and The Godfather to the big screen, but not sharing in the profits, Paramount production chief Robert Evans inveigled Charles Bludhorn, the head of conglomerate Gulf + Western that owned Paramount, into allowing him to personally produce movies like the old time moguls. Pleased that Evans had turned Paramount from a money-loser into the hottest studio in Hollywood, he allowed him to branch into production. Evans produced the classic neo-noir Chinatown in his first outing as a producer. The financial and critical success of "Chinatown" effectively doomed Evans as production chief, as the other producers at Paramount resented his success and believed he would siphon off the best projects in the future. To forestall a rebellion, Evans had to step down as chief of production. Production designer extrarordinaire Richard Sylbert, an Oscar-winner who had received an Academy Award nomination for "Chinatown," was hand-picked by Evans as his successor. Evans was impressed by Sylbert's close relationships with such heavy-weight talents as Warren Beatty, Mike Nichols and Roman Polanski. He was also impressed by Sylbert's grasp of visual storytelling. Thus, Sylbert took over as Evan's successor when he stepped down as Paramount's production chief in 1975. Evans' post-production chief career was disastrous, yielding only two unqualified hits, Marathon Man, which he produced for Paramount in 1976, and Urban Cowboy. Sylbert was eventually sacked by Paramount head Barry Diller in 1978 and went back to his successful production designing career, which yielded him a second Oscar. Evans went from debacle to debacle as his personal and professional life disintegrated. A masterful studio boss, he seemed incapable of making a success of the more picayune job of producer in a medium increasingly dominated by writer-directors and superstar actors. His seventh wife, Lady Victoria White, filed for divorce on June 16, 2006 citing irreconcilable differences (June 21, 2006).