A veteran producer and screenwriter as well as the longtime partner of Ang Lee—he's produced/written Lee's The Ice Storm, Hulk, and Brokeback Mountain—indie film powerhouse Jim Schamus is now CEO of Universal's art-house arm, Focus Features.

Born in Detroit, Schamus clearly picked the right school: he earned his BA, MA, and PhD in English from UC Berkeley. His first screenplay, Pushing Hands, was director Ang Lee's directorial debut as well, and the pairing proved to be a fortuitous career move. Schamus has written nearly every one of Ang Lee's films, earning an award for Best Screenplay at the Cannes Film Festival for The Ice Storm and Oscar and BAFTA nominations for his Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon screenplay. He also started beefing up his producing credits with his production company Good Machine, founded with friends Ted Hope and David Linde, but when it was purchased by Focus Features, Schamus stuck around and was eventually promoted to CEO. Although his duties running the company have limited his writer-producer credits recently, he still finds time to write, like 2009's Taking Woodstock, and flexes his intellectual muscles as a Professor of Professional Practice at Columbia, teaching film theory and history. [Image via Getty]