Movie Museum, Academy Awards are on Windsor Square resident’s to-do list

Suzan Filipek | August 28, 2013

Cheryl Boone Isaacs is as excited about movies today as when she was allowed to stay up late as a girl in Massachusetts to watch the Academy Awards.

Only now the Irving Blvd. resident is working with the producers on next year’s Oscars.

And, she is going over the fine points with Academy chief executive Dawn Hudson on a “world-class” movie museum planned at the historic May Co.

Isaacs was elected president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in July by its board of governors.

“That was a great first week. I’m very happy that Ellen (DeGeneres) is our host (of next year’s Academy Awards)… we’re off to a wonderful start,” she said last month from her city-view office on the top floor of the Academy’s Beverly Hills Wilshire Blvd. office.

She works with staff, runs the day-to-day operations and oversees the Academy’s 6,000 members who make movies around the world.

Close Encounters

Isaacs graduated from Whittier College with a political science degree, which may have actually prepared her for the movie business.

“Anytime there’s more than three people in a room, it’s political,” she said.

An older brother was an executive at 20th Century Fox, who had worked on “West Side Story” and “Star Wars,” but she still knocked on a lot of doors; she eventually landed a post on the press junket for not just any movie, but “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”

“What a way to start!” she beams.

Cheryl worked with journalists from interns to pros, all the while following her motto to work hard, keep her head down and look up in 10 years to see where she was.

The formula worked. She landed high-level jobs at Columbia Pictures, New Line Cinema and Paramount Studios, and handled several Best Picture winners, including “Forest Gump,” “Braveheart,” “The King’s Speech” and “The Artist.”

She’s been a member of the Academy since 1987, and held every post from secretary to president, and she was on the board of governors for two decades.