How Harvey Weinstein built the $150 million Hollywood empire that just fired him
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Harvey Weinstein has been ousted from his own company after a bombshell New York Times report detailed nearly three decades of inappropriate behavior towards women in Hollywood.
After the Times' report, The New Yorker published an article in which three women accused Weinstein of rape. Angelina Jolie and Gwyneth Paltrow also came forward and said Weinstein sexually harassed them in the past, detailing their experiences in The Times.
The film producer and cofounder of Miramax Films and The Weinstein Company built an empire from scratch out of Buffalo, New York.
A behemoth in the media industry, he became a major fundraiser to the Democratic party, positioning himself as a liberal lion and champion of feminism.
But these ideals have come up against the reports he harassed women for years, roiling public opinion and leading to his firing Sunday.
Here's a look at Weinstein's career over the past 30 years.
Weinstein was born in the Flushing neighborhood of Queens in 1952 to parents Miriam and Max.
He and his brother Bob grew up in small two-bedroom apartment in "a lower-middle-class housing development called Elechester," Bob wrote in Vanity Fair.
Both Harvey and Bob had a passion for the movie business that started when they were kids in Queens going to the Mayfair movie theater to see foreign films.
Weinstein left Queens to attend college at the University of Buffalo. He stuck around in Buffalo to start a concert promotion business called Harvey and Corky Productions.
He bought the Century Theater in downtown Buffalo, and began showing movies when the theater wasn't being used for concerts.
His younger brother, Bob, moved to Buffalo to join him.
Together, in 1979, they created the small independent film distribution company Miramax, a portmanteau of their parent's names: Miriam and Max.
"Miramax virtually created the art house boom in the 1990s by turning offbeat and inexpensive movies like 'Pulp Fiction' and 'Shakespeare in Love' into mainstream hits," wrote the New York Times.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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