The A List

Produced by Jennifer Ryan Jones

Billy Bob Thornton again demonstrates his trademark versatility this season, playing the title role in Bad Santa and putting a new spin on heroic Davy Crockett in The Alamo. Though this ultimate Hollywood eccentric is heralded as one of our most gifted actors, Thornton managed to pave his road to success through writing—most notably his Oscar-winning screenplay for Sling Blade. Turns out he followed a bit of advice from legendary director Billy Wilder. "He said to me early on that there's an actor on every street corner," says Thornton, "but that if I could create my own thing, I'd separate myself from the others. He was sure right. After Sling Blade, I wasn't standing in line anymore." Like his idol Robert Duvall, Thornton is equally adept at being a leading man and a character actor. "I think that's a good strategy for career longevity," he says. It's a lesson also well suited to fashion. Whether you're meeting a client or dining with a date, you want to stand out from the khaki crowd.

Marc Gurvitz has been behind more laughs than any big-screen funnyman. As a partner at powerhouse management firm Brillstein-Grey, where he's held sway for 18 years, Gurvitz discovered and nurtured such comic talents as Mike Myers, Bill Maher, David Spade and Chris Farley. As if that weren't enough, for the past five years he's also prepped Jennifer Aniston for a post-Friends movie career. "It's wrong for a rep to take credit for client accomplishments," Gurvitz insists. "Mine is a job I liken to a quarterback's, because I coordinate the blur of activity that takes place among the publicist, the agent, the attorney—all to make the client's career run smoothly." That includes being there when things are not running smoothly, which happened when Maher's comment about bravery and 9/11 cost the comic his ABC show Politically Incorrect. "He got caught up in this lynch mob mentality that momentarily took him down," says Gurvitz, who then took Maher to HBO.

Quincy Jones and his music span—and helped define—a half century of American pop culture. He broke into the business working with Ray Charles and Count Basie, guided Michael Jackson to his Thriller-fueled musical heights, organized We Are the World and helped break in new jacks such as Will Smith. But of his many storied associations Jones is still most in awe of his time with Frank Sinatra, who brought him in as arranger on "Fly Me to the Moon" and then as a member of his inner circle. Jones owns a ring with the Sinatra family crest, which he never takes off. "I met him and walked into another world," Jones recalls. "He used his voice and phrasing like a jazz instrument, and his breathing, elocution and commitment to getting emotion were the best. When I worked with the Rat Pack we drank, went to the steam room, all that stuff. But when it came time to work, Sinatra showed up 45 minutes early and took no prisoners. And every night we felt like we'd gone to heaven."

Jason Patric has already been through more careers than one can easily count—teen idol after Lost Boys, Hollywood pariah after Speed 2 and, most recently actor's actor after incendiary roles in Your Friends & Neighbors and Narc. Now he's back on Broadway in a revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and in cinemas as Jim Bowie in The Alamo. "I find it humorous that people consider me a comeback kid," Patric says. "I stay so far out of the light that it leaves an opening for people to write what they will. The thing is, I choose my momentum, and any success is a testament to my taste my gut. I refuse to bow down and compromise." Born in Queens, Patric's not afraid to speak his mind: "I think it is pathetic the way people in our industry are respected for a relentless need to generate publicity and be liked. They continually change their hair color and facades to appear to be living on some cutting edge. It's silly because then it's not about the work. It doesn't interest me."

Ed Zwick began his career as co-creator of such brutally honest TV series as Thirtysomething and My So-called Life and later became known as a director of smart epics like Legends of the Fall, Glory and Courage Under Fire. He recently stepped into elite status with The Last Samurai, a period epic starring Tom Cruise as a cavalry officer sent to Japan with orders to eliminate the samurai warriors who uphold law for feudal lords. Zwick counts Denzel Washington's Oscar-winning performance in Glory as a career highlight, particularly the haunting scene in which his character, a runaway slave turned soldier, is whipped for desertion. Washington's tearful look haunts Zwick to this day. "Those moments are like rapture, when you feel the movie gods have aligned for a moment that is much bigger than you or that actor." he says. "I remember a moment when Claire Danes looked at Jared Leto in My So-Called Life, and I saw in it everything I loved and hated about adolescence."

John Lee Hancock wrote the screenplays for the Clint Eastwood-directed films A Perfect World and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil before making his studio directing debut with the surprise baseball hit The Rookie. "I learned so much from Clint," he reports. "He was kind enough to let me hang around the set of both movies. I got to see how he would take what I wrote and make it happen." When Disney scrapped a pricey R-rated version of The Alamo, the Texas-born Hancock was challenged to redraft it. He rewrote the script and put his Rookie star Dennis Quaid in the role of Sam Houston, who avenges the Alamo massacre by Mexican troops. "It was my favorite story as a kid, and every Texan boy wore a coonskin cap before he could walk," Hancock says. "It's a complex political story, but at its core is what happens when those men stand on that wall. These are bankers, lawyers and farmers. Do they stay? Are they willing to die for an ideal?"

Greg Kinnear first made waves cracking wise as the host of E!'s Talk Soup and had to work harder than most to be taken seriously. He quickly turned around the skeptics, first as Harrison Ford's superficial brother in Sabrina, then in films like As Good As It Gets and Nurse Betty. He was a revelation in Auto Focus, playing Hogan's Heroes star Bob Crane, a voyeur whose obsession with pornography gets him killed. That role gave him the confidence to share a costume with Matt Damon—they're conjoined twins—in the new Farrelly brothers comedy, Stuck on You. How does Kinnear keep himself grounded? By going up in the air (sometimes). "One day I went out to Van Nuys Airport, signed up for lessons and started flying the Cessna 172, which is the Honda Accord of the skies," Kinnear says. "I stopped right before 9/11 and haven't gotten back. I've been playing a lot of golf, and I think you have to pick one or you become wildly dangerous at both. But I do want to fly again."

Jerry Bruckheimer is such an important producer he's become a brand name—an implicit promise of edge, high testosterone and some big explosions. He's produced Armageddon, Top Gun, Beverly Hills Cop, Bad Boys and Pirates of the Caribbean; turning his talents to TV he hatched the hits CSI, Without a Trace and this season's Cold Case. The dizzyingly prolific pace zoomed Bruckheimer's income to $35 million last year, and this year the number should be considerably higher. He's even knocking on Oscar's door with the film Veronica Guerin. Bruckheimer's reality check comes from the twice-weekly ice hockey pickup games he meticulously organizes. They're populated with deal makers and actors. "Hockey's my guilty pleasure, and it goes back to meeting Wayne Gretzky when he came to L.A. to play for the Kings," he says. "He reintroduced me to a game I grew up with in Detroit. I love it and can play any position that involves moving forward, because I don't skate backward very well."

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