There are countless cases of child stars who go bad. There are yet other cases of child stars who go on to successful entertainment careers. This is neither of those. These are ten former teen and child actors who returned to normal civilian life only to be recognized occasionally at Starbucks and mentioned occasionally on a site like this.
(See Also The Case of the Disappearing Actor and The Case of the Disappearing Actress)
Mayim Bialik: Signature Role: Blossom in "Blossom."
Where Is She Now? Doctorate in Neuroscience. Married. 2 children. Lives in L.A.
Ilan Mitchell-Smith: Signature Role: Wyatt in Weird Science
Where Is He Now? Doctorate in medieval studies. Married. Assistant Professor of English at Angelo State University in San Angelo, Texas.
Josh Saviano: Signature Role: Paul Ffieffer in "The Wonder Years"
Where Is He Now? Attended Yale Undergrad. Fordham law school. Married. One Child. Corporate attorney in New York City.
(See Also The Case of the Disappearing Actor and The Case of the Disappearing Actress)
Mayim Bialik: Signature Role: Blossom in "Blossom."
Where Is She Now? Doctorate in Neuroscience. Married. 2 children. Lives in L.A.
Ilan Mitchell-Smith: Signature Role: Wyatt in Weird Science
Where Is He Now? Doctorate in medieval studies. Married. Assistant Professor of English at Angelo State University in San Angelo, Texas.
Josh Saviano: Signature Role: Paul Ffieffer in "The Wonder Years"
Where Is He Now? Attended Yale Undergrad. Fordham law school. Married. One Child. Corporate attorney in New York City.
- 8/19/2010
- by Dustin Rowles
In June 2000, as the tech bubble was deflating, Susan Decker left her job as one of the nation's most successful Wall Street analysts to join Yahoo Inc. as its new CFO. Yahoo shares were in free fall and, rather suddenly, the effectiveness of online advertising was in doubt and entire business models lacked credibility.
Decker's response was to publicly acknowledge those dim realities.
That sort of honesty in the face of adversity was refreshing at the time and helped to solidify Decker's reputation as a straight shooter, observers say. Inside Yahoo, she was applying that candor with rigor, insisting that sales targets were set so realistically that even overperformance was avoided.
"If you were significantly over your targets, you were called in to explain yourself," said one former Yahoo executive speaking on condition of anonymity. "After the bust, she knew that investors needed to have faith in the numbers and to know there was a predictable business model. She wanted predictability to show the maturing of the Internet as an industry."
This month, seven years after joining the company, Decker, 44, was named president of Yahoo. Terry Semel, the former Warner Bros. co-chief who became Yahoo CEO a year after Decker joined the company, has resigned to focus on the role of nonexecutive chairman; co-founder Jerry Yang is the new CEO.
Many observers presume that Decker is on deck for Yahoo's top spot after Yang, a 38-year-old self-made billionaire, steps aside.
While Yang has been a public face for Yahoo since its inception a dozen years ago, Decker, who declined to be interviewed for this story, is more mysterious for many.
However, various sources mentioned Decker's assertiveness as a key attribute, with one industry observer saying he has heard her being referred to as the "alpha" in the new pairing at Yahoo's top.
And with her Wall Street background, many believe she could mesh well with Yang, who has a more laid-back style and is a "legend" in Silicon Valley circles.
"She knows how Wall Street's mentality works since she used to be an analyst herself," said Hal Vogel, president of Vogel Capital Management and a longtime media and entertainment analyst. "That will help in her new leadership position."
Current and former colleagues and industry sources also say the married mother of three and Harvard Business School graduate is smart and honest.
"It's going to be a boring article because you won't find anyone to say anything bad about her," one former high-ranking Yahoo executive quipped.
That executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Decker was one of those rare CFOs who trusted executives enough not to nitpick their budgets.
The executive tells how, during a budget meeting with Decker, Yang, Semel, Yahoo co-founder David Filo and others about a new project he was working on, Decker pulled him aside.
Decker's response was to publicly acknowledge those dim realities.
That sort of honesty in the face of adversity was refreshing at the time and helped to solidify Decker's reputation as a straight shooter, observers say. Inside Yahoo, she was applying that candor with rigor, insisting that sales targets were set so realistically that even overperformance was avoided.
"If you were significantly over your targets, you were called in to explain yourself," said one former Yahoo executive speaking on condition of anonymity. "After the bust, she knew that investors needed to have faith in the numbers and to know there was a predictable business model. She wanted predictability to show the maturing of the Internet as an industry."
This month, seven years after joining the company, Decker, 44, was named president of Yahoo. Terry Semel, the former Warner Bros. co-chief who became Yahoo CEO a year after Decker joined the company, has resigned to focus on the role of nonexecutive chairman; co-founder Jerry Yang is the new CEO.
Many observers presume that Decker is on deck for Yahoo's top spot after Yang, a 38-year-old self-made billionaire, steps aside.
While Yang has been a public face for Yahoo since its inception a dozen years ago, Decker, who declined to be interviewed for this story, is more mysterious for many.
However, various sources mentioned Decker's assertiveness as a key attribute, with one industry observer saying he has heard her being referred to as the "alpha" in the new pairing at Yahoo's top.
And with her Wall Street background, many believe she could mesh well with Yang, who has a more laid-back style and is a "legend" in Silicon Valley circles.
"She knows how Wall Street's mentality works since she used to be an analyst herself," said Hal Vogel, president of Vogel Capital Management and a longtime media and entertainment analyst. "That will help in her new leadership position."
Current and former colleagues and industry sources also say the married mother of three and Harvard Business School graduate is smart and honest.
"It's going to be a boring article because you won't find anyone to say anything bad about her," one former high-ranking Yahoo executive quipped.
That executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Decker was one of those rare CFOs who trusted executives enough not to nitpick their budgets.
The executive tells how, during a budget meeting with Decker, Yang, Semel, Yahoo co-founder David Filo and others about a new project he was working on, Decker pulled him aside.
- 6/26/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Terry Semel resigned under pressure Monday as CEO of Yahoo Inc. and the company handed the reins back to Jerry Yang, the billionaire co-founder of the search engine that became one of the Internet's earliest success stories.
Yahoo said Semel has assumed the role of nonexecutive chairman and will serve as an adviser to Yang, named CEO, and Susan Decker, who was promoted to president and is considered a prime candidate for the CEO spot someday.
Semel has been under scrutiny from shareholders who have expressed bewilderment at his generous pay packages while Yahoo stock has gone nowhere and rival Google Inc. widens its competitive lead. Semel, the former co-chairman of Warner Bros., has earned about $450 million, mostly from Yahoo stock options, since taking over as CEO in May 2001.
While Yahoo was rebounding from the bursting of the Internet bubble, Semel's hefty compensation was a nonissue. More recently, Yahoo dropped 35% last year while Semel earned $71.7 million.
That was a bit too much to take for shareholders, who criticized Semel and other top management at the company's shareholder meeting last week, prompting observers to speculate that Semel would soon be out.
Semel, however, earned kudos early on at Yahoo for quickly turning around the company and building shareholder value. When he joined six years ago, he purchased with his own money $1 million in Yahoo stock, which has more than tripled since then on a split-adjusted basis.
Much like the success he had while running Warner Bros. with co-chairman Bob Daly, Semel oversaw a rapid rise in revenue at the company. At Yahoo, sales jumped from about $750 million annually to $6.4 billion last year under his tenure. In the two decades Daly and Semel ran Warners, revenue there rose from $750 million to $11 billion.
But some said Monday that there was nothing spectacular about Semel's early success at Yahoo. Sure, the stock surged 225% during his reign -- far outpacing the S&P 500's rise of 28.5% -- but other Internet stalwarts also fared well. Shares of eBay, for example, are up 194% during the same time frame, and Amazon is up 387%.
More significantly, when Google, a direct competitor, went public three years ago, it had a market capitalization of $23 billion compared with Yahoo's $39 billion. But Yahoo's value has since shrunk to $37.8 billion, while Google's worth has catapulted to $160.5 billion.
"Semel was made the gatekeeper to the promise of the Internet, and he handed the keys to Google," said Cody Willard, a hedge-fund manager who has owned Google shares since its initial public offering.
Yahoo said Semel has assumed the role of nonexecutive chairman and will serve as an adviser to Yang, named CEO, and Susan Decker, who was promoted to president and is considered a prime candidate for the CEO spot someday.
Semel has been under scrutiny from shareholders who have expressed bewilderment at his generous pay packages while Yahoo stock has gone nowhere and rival Google Inc. widens its competitive lead. Semel, the former co-chairman of Warner Bros., has earned about $450 million, mostly from Yahoo stock options, since taking over as CEO in May 2001.
While Yahoo was rebounding from the bursting of the Internet bubble, Semel's hefty compensation was a nonissue. More recently, Yahoo dropped 35% last year while Semel earned $71.7 million.
That was a bit too much to take for shareholders, who criticized Semel and other top management at the company's shareholder meeting last week, prompting observers to speculate that Semel would soon be out.
Semel, however, earned kudos early on at Yahoo for quickly turning around the company and building shareholder value. When he joined six years ago, he purchased with his own money $1 million in Yahoo stock, which has more than tripled since then on a split-adjusted basis.
Much like the success he had while running Warner Bros. with co-chairman Bob Daly, Semel oversaw a rapid rise in revenue at the company. At Yahoo, sales jumped from about $750 million annually to $6.4 billion last year under his tenure. In the two decades Daly and Semel ran Warners, revenue there rose from $750 million to $11 billion.
But some said Monday that there was nothing spectacular about Semel's early success at Yahoo. Sure, the stock surged 225% during his reign -- far outpacing the S&P 500's rise of 28.5% -- but other Internet stalwarts also fared well. Shares of eBay, for example, are up 194% during the same time frame, and Amazon is up 387%.
More significantly, when Google, a direct competitor, went public three years ago, it had a market capitalization of $23 billion compared with Yahoo's $39 billion. But Yahoo's value has since shrunk to $37.8 billion, while Google's worth has catapulted to $160.5 billion.
"Semel was made the gatekeeper to the promise of the Internet, and he handed the keys to Google," said Cody Willard, a hedge-fund manager who has owned Google shares since its initial public offering.
- 6/19/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Shares of Yahoo! Inc. tumbled in after-hours trading Tuesday after the company issued a quarterly earnings report that again disappointed investors.
Yahoo! posted first-quarter net income of $142 million, down from $160 million a year ago. On a per-share basis, Yahoo! earned a dime, while analysts expected 11 cents.
Revenue rose 7% to $1.7 billion, while revenue minus the share Yahoo! pays to its advertising partners -- the more closely examined metric -- was up 9% to $1.18 billion, just shy of analysts' expectations of $1.21 billion.
Yahoo! which was up 1.5% during the regular session, dropped as much as 8% after hours once it reported results. The stock was off $2.54 late Tuesday to $29.57, putting it below where it traded a year ago.
CEO Terry Semel and CFO Susan Decker were upbeat during a conference call with analysts, stressing important new developments, including rival Google Inc's. recent $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick, a player in the online display advertising business that Yahoo! dominates.
Yahoo! posted first-quarter net income of $142 million, down from $160 million a year ago. On a per-share basis, Yahoo! earned a dime, while analysts expected 11 cents.
Revenue rose 7% to $1.7 billion, while revenue minus the share Yahoo! pays to its advertising partners -- the more closely examined metric -- was up 9% to $1.18 billion, just shy of analysts' expectations of $1.21 billion.
Yahoo! which was up 1.5% during the regular session, dropped as much as 8% after hours once it reported results. The stock was off $2.54 late Tuesday to $29.57, putting it below where it traded a year ago.
CEO Terry Semel and CFO Susan Decker were upbeat during a conference call with analysts, stressing important new developments, including rival Google Inc's. recent $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick, a player in the online display advertising business that Yahoo! dominates.
- 4/18/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Yahoo! Inc. executives said Tuesday that the company's third-quarter results will be hurt by slower growth in ad sales than they previously anticipated, sending its stock sliding 11% and taking the shares of competitors down with it. "We're seeing slowing in both auto and financial services," CEO Terry Semel told Wall Street analysts at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia conference. Chief financial officer Susan Decker added that lackluster spending on display and search-based advertising will lead Yahoo! to "deliver in the bottom half of the range" of third-quarter estimates "and nothing more material than that." In July, the company expected third-quarter earnings of $1.1 billion-$1.2 billion.
- 9/19/2006
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Yahoo! confirmed Thursday that, after having met with Time Warner executives, it has passed on taking an equity stake in the media conglomerate's America Online unit. Insiders said that Yahoo! CEO Terry Semel and chief financial officer Susan Decker discussed with Time Warner execs last month an arrangement whereby Yahoo! would pay as much as $13 billion for about an 80% stake in AOL's content business, while Time Warner would keep all of the Internet access business. The negotiations fell apart, though, over Yahoo!'s opinion that such a price was too high and because of Time Warner's desire to maintain a majority ownership position in the suddenly hot AOL.
- 11/11/2005
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. has added John Thornton, professor of global leadership at Tsinghua University of Beijing and former president and co-chief operating officer of Goldman Sachs, to its board of directors... Pixar Animation Studios has added Yahoo! Inc. chief financial officer Susan Decker to its board of directors ... Bankrupt cable operator Adelphia Communications reported financials for May late last week, with its number of basic subscribers declining by 6,000 after a 12,000 drop in April ... French pay TV group Canal Plus, a unit of Vivendi Universal, has completed the sale of a 48.85% stake in sport rights firm Sportfive to private equity firm Advent International for €274 million ($332.6 million).
- 6/25/2004
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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