Dawn Steel was the first woman to run a major motion picture studio. She came to Paramount in 1978 and Columbia Pictures in 1987. She appeared on the cover of California magazine with the title, The Queen of Mean. There was an article inside on the worst bosses to work for in California.
There were many rumors about her, but in her book (They Can Kill You, But They Can't Eat You) she seems reasonable and far from the image that has been pictured.
When asked why men like Michael Eisner and Dan Katzenberg helped in her career, Steel replied: "One was that I was funny. I wasn't heavy furniture. I made them laugh and entertained them. And the other thing was that I could identify a good idea. Not a lot of people can do that. That was my gift."
"She was completely electrifying in the staff meeting . . . She would walk in with those Armani suits, and she always wore these hilarious shoulder pads, and a white T-shirt. It was so eighties. She would crack jokes, and she was really funny. She just knew how to turn it on. She was more like a performer than any other studio executive I've ever seen. She was like a star. In her own mind more than anywhere."
-- Amy Pascal
Dawn Steel Quotations
"Never try to teach a pig to sing. You waste your time and you annoy the pig."
"It turns out that there's no better habit to bring to the workplace than risk-taking. You have to gamble if you're going to break out of the pack of conformists and blaze any kind of career trail. Risk-taking makes you an inovator, a leader."
"They may destroy your job, but they can't destroy you."
"How you dress is essential to the image you project and to your own dignity. Your clothes are a reflectioin of how you see yourself."
"A mentor is invaluable. Find one. Someone who will spot your raw, natural gifts and groom you to do more than you're doing. Someone who has a big mind. Big-minded people don't feel threatened."
"If they throw you out the front door, you go in the back door. And if they throw you out the back door, you go in the window. And if they throw you out the window, you go in the basement. And you don't ever take it personally."
"Now whenever I'm trying to train someone, I always tell them to just sit in my office and listen the way I used to listen . . . You can't beat that for an education. And pretty soon, if you sit there long enough, someone's going to come up with somehting they need you to do."
"If you see yourself as a victim, other will see you as a victim."
"In Hollywood, as in many places, relationships are essential to getting anything done. You meet people in strange places and they pop up elsewhere in your life."
"If you are negotiating from a place of desperation, you're dead. You have to be willing to let it go."
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