Barry Diller

Barry Charles Diller (born February 2, 1942) is an American billionaire businessman. He is chairman of People Incorporated and Expedia Group, and founded the Fox Broadcasting Company with Rupert Murdoch and USA Broadcasting. Diller was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 1994.

Diller was born on February 2, 1942, in San Francisco, California, to Michael Diller and his wife Reva (née Addison). He was raised in Beverly Hills. In May 2012, New York magazine described Diller as a "second generation Austrian Jewish kid". On the April 14, 2026 episode of Finding Your Roots it was revealed that Diller's paternal ancestors came from the village of Pianovychi, near Staryi Sambir in the Lviv Oblast of modern-day Ukraine (which was part of the Austria-Hungary-controlled region of Galicia until 1918), and his maternal ancestors came from the Vilna Governorate of the Russian Empire (modern-day Vilnius, Lithuania).

Diller began his career through a family connection in the mailroom of the William Morris Agency after dropping out of UCLA after three weeks. His proximity to the company's file room meant that he could spend free time reading through the archives and learning the entire history of the entertainment industry. He was hired as an assistant by Leonard Goldberg, then West Coast head of ABC, who was promoted to network President at the same time Diller went to work for him in 1964, taking him on to New York City. Diller was soon placed in charge of negotiating broadcast rights to feature films. He was promoted to Vice President of Development in 1965. In this position, Diller created the ABC Movie of the Week, pioneering the concept of the made-for-television movie through a regular series of 90-minute films produced exclusively for television. In 1973, Diller became vice president of ABC's prime time programming.

From 1974 to 1984, Diller was chairman and chief executive officer of Paramount Pictures. With Diller at the helm, the studio produced TV shows such as Laverne & Shirley (1976), Taxi (1978), and Cheers (1982) and films including Saturday Night Fever (1977), Grease (1978), Ordinary People (1980), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and sequel Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), Reds (1981), Terms of Endearment (1983), and Beverly Hills Cop (1984).

In 2026, Diller credited the "bonanza" close-together releases of Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977), Saturday Night Fever and Grease as turning the tide for Paramount during his time as head of the company, describing much of the preceding films released at Paramount during his reign as "one dog movie after the other."

Diller emphasized having separate business units aiding each other. He prevented Paramount parent Gulf+Western-owned Madison Square Garden from selling its interest in the USA Network, so Garden could provide programming for Paramount television networks. In 1983 Diller became head of Gulf+Western's leisure group, including Paramount, Madison Square Garden, Famous Music, and Simon & Schuster. Robert Montgomery of Paul, Weiss described him as "probably the most successful executive in the film business today", and A. D. Murphy, director of the motion picture producing program at the University of Southern California, said "Under Barry Diller, Paramount has become one of the world's greatest entertainment companies".

Unable to achieve his goal of competing with the Big Three television networks at Paramount, Diller left the studio. From October 1984 to April 1992, he held the positions of chairman and chief executive officer of 20th Century Fox, where he created and launched the Fox network and greenlighted shows such as Married... with Children and The Simpsons.

Diller is responsible for what the media dubs "The Killer Dillers" – people whom Diller mentored and who later became major media and internet executives in their own right. Examples include Michael Eisner (who was President of Paramount Pictures while Diller was its chairman & CEO, and went on to become chairman & CEO of The Walt Disney Company), Jeffrey Katzenberg (a head of production of Paramount under Diller who became a co-founder of DreamWorks SKG and former head of DreamWorks Animation and Walt Disney Studios), Strauss Zelnick (President at Fox while Diller was its chairman and CEO who became the founder and CEO of private equity firm ZMC, the chairman and CEO of video game company Take-Two Interactive), Don Simpson (who was President of Production at Paramount under Diller and Eisner before forming an independent production company initially based on the Paramount lot with Jerry Bruckheimer), Dara Khosrowshahi (CEO of Uber), Dawn Steel (a VP of Production for Paramount when Diller was Chair & CEO; she went on to become President of Columbia Pictures, one of the first women to run a major movie studio) and Garth Ancier (former president of BBC America).

Diller worked with Stephen Chao at Fox Television Network, whom he later hired as President of Programming and Marketing at USA Network. Julius Genachowski, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, was Diller's General Counsel during their tenure at USA Broadcasting, and as a member of Diller's Office of the Chairman at IAC/InterActiveCorp. Jamie Kellner, who later joined Warner Bros. and created The WB television network, was also the first executive Diller hired to manage the Fox Broadcasting Company.

In 2001, Diller married fashion designer Diane von Fürstenberg, mother of Prince Alexander von Fürstenberg and Princess Tatiana von Fürstenberg. Diller owns an estimated third of her eponymous fashion company. As of June 2020, Diller's estimated net worth was $4.2 billion. He owns Eos, one of the largest private sailing yachts in the world.

In March 2026, Diller acquired former U.S. President John F. Kennedy and former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis' former penthouse at Carlyle Hotel in New York City for $11 million.

Diller is a member of the Democratic Party and supporter of related political causes. In 2012, he stated his support for Barack Obama's reelection campaign despite misgivings with aspects of the Obama administration's record, and expressed his approval of then-Mayor of New York City Michael Bloomberg. In 2015, Diller criticized Republican candidate Donald Trump's impact on political discourse and said he would leave the country if he was elected.

During the 2020 Democratic primary, Diller expressed reservations over Elizabeth Warren, but stated he would support her over Trump if she was nominated. In 2024, Diller was among those who called for U.S. President Joe Biden to end his bid for re-election after his poor debate performance and other disconcerting signs on the campaign trail. Diller along with fellow billionaire Reid Hoffman said that Kamala Harris should replace FTC chair Lina Khan in a potential Harris administration.

According to Maureen Dowd in an interview with Diller, "he did admit to one damning thing: 'I introduced Rupert Murdoch to Roger Ailes.'" In the interview, Diller "defended his "very, very dear, loving friend" Jeff Bezos's killing of the Washington Post's endorsement of Kamala Harris. Diller also defended Shari Redstone in her capitulation to Trump saying, "the idea of settling this idiot suit is horrible" but found it understandable to "bend the knee if there's a guillotine at your head". Diller said, "I'm so angry at the Democratic progressivism and elite nonsense of the last decade (...) I hate the woke right as much as I hate the woke left. A ban on both their houses."

Diller and von Fürstenberg donated a combined $105,000 to Kathy Hochul between 2021 and 2022.

In 2011, the Diller-von Fürstenberg Family Foundation announced a donation of $20 million to support the completion of the High Line park in Manhattan. In 2012, Diller donated $30 million to the Hollywood Fund, which provides health and social care to retired individuals from the show-business world.

In 2015, Diller and his wife committed to donate $260 million toward Little Island, a public park and performance space on a reconstructed pier 55 in the Hudson River in New York City. It is stated to be the largest donation to a public park in city history. The park was completed on May 21, 2021.

1992: Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement