The former Viacom CEO was born in 1945 and attended college at St. Michael's in Vermont. Following business school at NYU and a short stint in advertising, Freston moved to South Asia for nearly a decade. He then returned to New York in the '80s and took a marketing gig at the nascent MTV, a year before the cable channel launched.

Following the departure of MTV CEO Bob Pittman in 1987, Freston assumed the top spot and presided over MTV's migration away from music videos and unleashed upon the world Beavis and Butt-head and The Real World. He also led MTV to branch out to film (MTV Films) and the web (mtv.com) and made MTV a global cultural force.

When Viacom split in 2004, chairman Sumner Redstone named Freston the CEO of Viacom. But less than two years later, Redstone dismissed Freston, reportedly because he faulted him for missing out on the chance to acquire MySpace. (It was purchased by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. instead). Don't feel too bad though — the spiky-haired TV vet received a golden parachute worth $84.8 million. He used that money to, among other things, travel throughout Southeast Asia and Africa, a journey he wrote about in 2007 for Vanity Fair. Since then he's had a myriad of jobs, including consulting for Oprah, and investing in the online video site Veoh.com.

Freston has two kids with his first wife, Gilbert and Andrew. He's currently married to Kathy Freston, a yogaphile and "growth and spirituality counselor" who authored the self-help tome Expect a Miracle: Seven Spiritual Steps to Finding the Right Relationship. The couple live in a townhouse on East 66th Street that once belonged to Andy Warhol; they purchased the manse in 2000 for $6.5 million. The Frestons also have a home in Beverly Hills.

[Image via Getty]

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