Cindy Cowan

A talented visionary in the movie industry, Cindy Dowan is an American movie producer and songwriter who co-founded her own production company Initial Entertainment Group (IEG) in 1995 with Graham King. Over the following five years before the sale of IEG in 2000, the company accumulated many successes including: an Emmy nomination for Rent-A-Kid (1995) starring Leslie Nielsen, Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for If These Walls Could Talk (1996) and an Oscar win for Traffic (2000) with superstar Michael Douglas. After selling her stake in IEG, Cowan went on to found yet another production company called Cindy Cowan Entertainment where she produced such successful movies as Scorched (2003), Fifty Dead Men Walking (2008) and Red Lights (2012) starring Hollywood icons Robert De Niro and Sigourney Weaver.

Cowan started out as a songwriter in Los Angeles, eventually securing songwriting gigs for the likes of Engelbert Humperdinck, Pamala Stanley and Howard Hewitt, for whom she wrote the chart-topping hit “This Love is Forever”. It wasn’t long before she set her sights on her dream of becoming an accomplished movie producer. Additional projects overseen by Cowan during her time at IEG include Very Bad Things (1998) with Cameron Diaz and Jon Favreau, as well as the ensemble cast romantic comedy Dr. T & the Women (2000) with Richard Gere.

More recently Cowan produced the low-budget horror movie Smiley (2012) which was aimed at the digital marketplace. The trailer for Smiley became a viral sensation after drumming up over 34 million hits online. Cowan and her company are now keen to undertake more productions for television over the coming years. Admirable for her tenacity and ambition, Cowan is a role model for those looking to break into the movie industry and tap into their creative sparks.