Kathleen Kennedy

Certainly one of the most powerful women in contemporary Hollywood, producer and former Amblin Entertainment president Kathleen Kennedy was associated with a startling percentage of the top 20 highest-grossing American films, some of which were Oscar-nominated Best Picture nominees. After impressing director Steven Spielberg as a production assistant on "1941" (1979) and meeting future husband and producing partner Frank Marshall on "Raiders of the Lost Ark" (1981), Kennedy co-founded Amblin Entertainment with Marshall and Spielberg, one of the most successful production companies in the history of the industry. As president, producer and occasionally executive producer, Kennedy oversaw an impressive array of motion pictures, from "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" (1982), "Back to the Future" (1985) and "The Color Purple" (1985) to "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" (1988), "Jurassic Park" (1993) and "Schindler's List" (1993). In 1992, Kennedy and Marshall branched off on their own to form The Kennedy/Marshall Company, where they continued their success with "The Sixth Sense" (1999), "Signs" (2003), "Seabiscuit" (2003) and "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" (2008). Of course, Kennedy maintained her working partnership with Spielberg on such critical and commercial hits as "Munich" (2005), "War of the Worlds" (2005), and "War Horse" (2011). When George Lucas picked her as his successor in 2012 to run Lucasfilm, it only added to Kennedy's legend as one of Hollywood's most powerful and successful producers.