About Jake Eberts
Jake Eberts, OC (July 10, 1941 – September 6, 2012) was a Canadian film producer, executive and financier. He is known for his work on Academy Award-winning titles Chariots of Fire (1981, uncredited), Gandhi (1982), Dances with Wolves (1990), and the successful animated feature Chicken Run (2000). According to Filmink magazine "he was responsible for some of the greatest British films of all time." == Life and career == Eberts was born John David Eberts in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, the son of Elizabeth (MacDougall), an interior decorator, and Edmond Eberts, who worked for an aluminum manufacturer. Eberts grew up in Montreal and Arvida. He attended Bishop's College School in Lennoxville, Quebec and graduated from McGill University (Bachelor of Chemical Engineering 1962) and Harvard Business School (MBA 1966). Eberts' working career began as a start-up engineer for L'Air Liquide in Spain, Italy, Germany and France. He then spent three years as a Wall Street investor, including working at Laird Incorporated. He moved to London, England in 1971, where he joined Oppenheimer & Co., rising to the position of managing director of the UK brokerage and investment company in 1976. === With Goldcrest Films === With no apparent prior interest in film, about 1977 he turned to film financing, and joined David Puttnam in founding Goldcrest Films, an independent film production company, for which he served as president and CEO. The company's venture was the animated movie Watership Down. While with Goldcrest in 1979, he made a disastrous personal investment of US$750,000 in Zulu Dawn, which took him almost a decade to recover from.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.