Film Producer Laura Ziskin died 12 June 2011, after battling breast cancer since 2004. Born 3 March 1950, she was best known for her work on the current Spider-Man series of films. She won the Producers Guild of America’s Lifetime Achievement Award in Motion Pictures in 2005, and the Casting Society of America’s Career Achievement Award in 2009. She was also nominated for Emmy Awards for producing the Academy Awards broadcasts in 2002 and 2007, as well as the TV movie Dinner with Friends (2001).
After graduating from the University of Southern California’s School for Cinematic Arts, Ziskin worked as a game show writer and personal assistant to producer Jon Peters. From there, she moved on to become a development executive, eventually forming Fogwood Films with partner Sally Field. At Fogwood, she produced Murphy’s Romance which starred Field, and No Way Out with a young Kevin Costner. Then she moved on to Touchstone Pictures, and then took over as president of Fox 2000, where she oversaw hits such as Pretty Woman and Courage Under Fire. She also executive produced Oscar-nominee As Good As It Gets.
She left Fox 2000 in 1999, and signed an independent production deal with Columbia Pictures, where she shepherded Spider-Man to the big screen in 2002. Her other genre productions include: Eyes of Laura Mars (1978), Fail Safe (2000), three episodes of Tarzan (2003), Spider-Man 2 (2004), Stealth (2005), Spider-Man 3 (2007), and the forthcoming The Amazing Spider-Man (2012).
After receiving her cancer diagnosis, she also became active in fighting the disease, co-founding Stand Up to Cancer in 2008, and producing the two Stand Up to Cancer televised events, in September 2008 and September 2010.
She is survived by her husband, Spider-Man screenwriter Alvin Sargent, and a daughter from her first marriage.