Brett Ratner

Prolific music video director-turned-millennial blockbuster king, Brett Ratner kicked off his Hollywood career with a bang, establishing himself as a director of commercially successful popcorn movies beginning in the late 1990s. Though frequently derided by critics for his big-budget, high-octane approach to filmmaking, Ratner's success at the box office could not be disputed. As the director of the hugely profitable "Rush Hour" series, Ratner reigned over an international money-making machine which netted New Line Studios a whopping $850 million at the box office, elevating him into the strata of Hollywood's A-list filmmakers. Well known in Hollywood for his active social schedule and hard-partying ways, Ratner's private life was often every bit as colorful as his movies, with rumored romances with a bevy of high-profile starlets including Rebecca Gayheart and Lindsay Lohan as well as tennis champ Serena Williams keeping him tabloid-friendly. But this was also the same man who so respected the vanishing old Hollywood guard, he was known to pursue the legends of the business like an enamored schoolgirl, endearing himself to many in the process for his almost childlike enthusiasm for everything Hollywood.