Childhood: He was born on Lower East Side, Manhatten to working-class Jewish Ukrainian émigreés. His parents, Abe and Batya Geffen, were bra manufacturers.

Education: In 1961 he enrolled at the University of Texas, Austin, where his brother Mitchell was also a student.

Work: Geffen's girlfriend's sister was dating Phil Spector, and so the first show business contact was made. He failed to graduate from university, but got a job as an usher at CBS Television City. He was sacked after punching a member of a television audience for applauding when the assassination of John Kennedy was announced.
In 1964 he joined the mailroom in the William Morris Agency, which was then the biggest talent agency in the world. He worked his way up through the company, and by 1967 he was regarded as the most sought after agent in William Morris.
He left William Morris in 1968 and took a job with the Ashley Famous Agency.
In 1971 he founded Asylum Records. The Company managed The Eagles and Joni Mitchell. Asylum was sold to Warner in 1972 for $7m. He then began working on films with Warner.
He opened his Roxy nightclub, in 1973 on Suset Boulevard. He met Cher at the opening night and they soon planned to marry, but Cher changed her mind in early 1974. Geffen is played by Mahryah Shain in the 1999 television film And the Beat Goes On: The Sonny and Cher Story.
In 1975 he was hired by Warner Pictures as vice-chairman, and chief assistant to the company's chairman, Ted Ashley. However, they had a personality clash and after 11 months Geffen was sacked. In 1980 he created Geffen Records with Warner and signed up John Lennon, Elton John, and Guns n' Roses. He sold the company to MCA Records in 1989 for $550m.
He backed the musical Dreamgirls, in 1981, and Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats on Broadway.
In 1990 he bought the mansion in Los Angeles that had belonged to Jack Warner for $47.5m which was then the highest price paid for a single family home in the USA.
In the early nineties, he also provided financial backing for Bill Clinton's presidential campaign.

Greatest Achievements: In 1994 he founded the Dreamworks SKG Hollywood studio and entertainment company with Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg (see above). They have successes with Saving Private Ryan, and American Beauty.
He has contributed to a various charities, and his name is on several buildings in California, for example, The Geffen Playhouse in UCLA.

Friends & Relationships: In 2000 a media stir was caused by the biography by Tom King and its cataloguing of David Geffen's wheeler dealing and betrayals of friends in order to get what he wanted in his businesses. He came out publicly as being gay in 1992 at a Hollywood Aids benefit when he said '... as a gay man, I've come a long way to be here tonight ...'.

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