Jerry Bruckheimer

Jerry Bruckheimer is an American film and television producer whose more than 40 feature films and dozens of television series have grossed over twenty billion dollars worldwide, making him one of the highest-grossing producers in Hollywood history. He was born Jerome Leon Bruckheimer on September 21, 1943, in Detroit, Michigan, to German-Jewish immigrant parents from the village of Bruckheim, and graduated from the University of Arizona in 1965.

He worked in advertising in New York and Detroit through the late 1960s before moving to Los Angeles to produce films, beginning with The Culpepper Cattle Co. (1972) and Farewell, My Lovely (1975). In 1983 he formed a producing partnership with the director Don Simpson, and through Simpson/Bruckheimer Films they produced Flashdance (1983), Beverly Hills Cop (1984), Top Gun (1986), Crimson Tide (1995), and The Rock (1996), helping define the high-concept Hollywood blockbuster of the 1980s and 1990s.

Following Simpson's death in 1996 he produced solo, with Michael Bay directing Armageddon (1998) and Pearl Harbor (2001), and Gore Verbinski directing Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) and its sequels, which together have grossed more than four and a half billion dollars worldwide. He also produced the National Treasure films starring Nicolas Cage and the 2022 sequel Top Gun: Maverick.

In television he produced the CBS forensic-procedural CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2000–2015) and its three spinoffs, Cold Case, Without a Trace, and The Amazing Race, which won ten Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Reality-Competition Program. He has won six Primetime Emmy Awards and received the Producers Guild of America's David O. Selznick Achievement Award in 1997.

His name Jerry is a short form of Jerome, from the Greek Hierōnymos, combining hieros meaning "sacred" and onoma meaning "name" — that is, "holy name." Jerome and the short form Jerry were common American boys' names through the mid-twentieth century when he was born.