Richard Darryl Zanuck (December 13, 1934 – July 13, 2012) was an American film producer. He won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1989 for Driving Miss Daisy.

Life and career

Richard Darryl Zanuck was born in Los Angeles, California, to actress Virginia Fox and Darryl F. Zanuck, then head of 20th Century Fox. While studying at Stanford University, he began his career in the film industry working for the 20th Century Fox story department. In 1959, Zanuck had his first shot at producing with the film Compulsion. In the 1960s Zanuck became the president of 20th Century Fox; one year of his tenure, 1967, is chronicled in theJohn Gregory Dunne book The Studio. After disastrous failures like 1967's Doctor Dolittle, he was later fired by his father and joined Warner Bros. as Executive Vice President and one year later formed The Zanuck/Brown Company. In 1968 he married model and actress Linda Harrison; they later divorced in 1978.

In 1972, Zanuck joined up with David Brown to form an independent production company called The Zanuck/Brown Company at Universal Pictures. The two men produced a pair of Steven Spielberg's early films, The Sugarland Express (1974) and Jaws (1975). They subsequently produced such box office hits as Cocoon (1985) and Driving Miss Daisy (1989) before dissolving their partnership in 1988. They were jointly awarded the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1990. He worked with Tim Burton six times, producing Planet of the Apes (2001), Big Fish (2003), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007), Alice in Wonderland (2010), and Dark Shadows (2012). He and Burton connected immediately, and Zanuck was his producer of choice.

In 1998, Zanuck's third wife Lili Fini Zanuck directed an episode of the HBO miniseries From the Earth to the Moon, titled We Have Cleared the Tower. In 2000, Zanuck and Lili Fini co-produced the 72nd Academy Awards ceremony.

Death

Richard Zanuck died on July 13, 2012, of a heart attack at his home in Beverly Hills. His age at his death, 77, was the same age as that of his father, who died in 1979.