Onetime Superagent, Drug Abuser Is Found Hanged

He was one of Hollywood’s hottest young agents, an ambitious Armani-clad local kid who started out as an intern from USC sorting mail and practically overnight represented such top talent as Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Mike Nichols, David Letterman and Dustin Hoffman.

On Tuesday morning, Jay Moloney was found hanged from a shower head at his rented Mulholland Drive home, two days after celebrating his 35th birthday at a small dinner party with friends.

For a time, before he was overwhelmed by drug abuse, Moloney was on the fast track to become one of the most powerful figures in Hollywood, a boy wonder who owned Picassos and Warhols and was earning $1 million a year by age 30.

Tall, handsome and cocky, Moloney used his charm and boyish appeal to become the quintessential young deal maker in an era when agents became a powerful force in shaping popular culture.

But he could never beat his cocaine habit. Moloney spent the four years before his apparent suicide in and out of drug clinics so often that he joked to Premiere magazine that he planned to write a book called the Zagat Guide to Rehabs. He had dropped off Hollywood’s radar screen, struggling to get his life back on track.

“He was on a high wire and lost his footing,” said Sandy Climan, a former veteran agent at Creative Artists Agency, where Moloney started in the mail room in 1984.

The onetime Hollywood golden boy and ringleader of the Young Turks--a fraternity of rich, hyper-ambitious agents at CAA--Moloney studied at the feet of Michael Ovitz when he was regarded as the most powerful agent in town.

As Ovitz’s protege, Moloney looked up to the man not only as a business role model but also as a surrogate father. Friends say Moloney had a strained relationship with his own father, Jim Moloney, now deceased, who had also been a talent agent.

A native of Malibu who moved to Oregon when his parents split up, Moloney once worked six days a week on a commercial fishing boat based in the small town where he went to high school.

After leaving CAA in mid-1996, Moloney bounced around trying to find himself, reportedly even spending short stints working on a kibbutz in Israel and doing manual labor in the Caribbean.

“It is a tragic waste of a young life,” said Universal Studios President Ron Meyer, who co-founded CAA with Ovitz and Bill Haber, where Moloney effectively started and ended his Hollywood career.

Moloney, discussing his drug abuse in a 1997 article in Premiere magazine, said he started using cocaine in 1995. It began as casual weekend partying after a friend confessed to using the drug, then graduated to blowouts that lasted until dawn, he said.

Moloney had given up mountain biking and soon began using the drug on Monday mornings for a boost. What ensued were deeper steps into addiction and tragedy, including a car crash in Alhambra after a night partying, according to the article.

People who knew him had no easy answers about how he became so drug-obsessed, but the addiction followed the death of his father in 1994 and a strain in his relationship with Ovitz, who felt Moloney had grown too cocky. In 1995, Ovitz left CAA and Moloney to become president of Walt Disney Co., a job he’s since left.

Meyer recalled that Moloney had come to him 3 1/2 years ago seeking career advice, just 30 days out of rehab. “I said, ‘It’s too quick to think about what you’re going to do,’ and I advised him to take a break and then call me. I never saw him again, except we bumped into each other on the street and said hello.”

The lead item in the New York Post Page 6 gossip column the morning Moloney was found dead was about his being back in rehab. Titled “Drugs Again Sideline L.A. Agent,” the item said: “Pals of Jay Moloney are praying for the former Hollywood superagent as he battles his old drug demons,” and quoted unnamed friends saying they hoped he was on the mend.

Now a talent manager and entrepreneur, Ovitz stuck by Moloney over the years, steering him into medical programs in an unsuccessful attempt to help him overcome his addictions. On Tuesday, Ovitz said, “He was an incredibly talented man with a kind and gentle soul. Unfortunately, his personal struggles were too great to overcome.”

Moloney’s body was found at about 9 a.m. in the shower of a bathroom off the master bedroom in his Los Angeles home by musician friend Ben Taylor, son of singers Carly Simon and James Taylor.

“We are investigating it as a suicide, pending an examination by medical examiners,” said Scott Carrier, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County coroner.

Friends say that Moloney had overdosed on drugs in the last few years and had tried unsuccessfully to take his life.

Despite Moloney’s problems, there was no hint to even his closest friends in the last few days that he was again planning to kill himself. Moloney had business and personal meetings scheduled for Tuesday and had recently told friends that he planned to renew his passport.

At midnight Monday, Moloney called a close friend, telling him he wanted to talk and have breakfast.

Earlier this year, Moloney attempted a short-lived comeback in the entertainment business when he was hired as president of Paradise Music & Entertainment, a management and production company involved in music videos and TV commercials. The firm wanted to tap Moloney’s Hollywood relationships to expand into film. His hiring raised eyebrows because the company is publicly traded, and Moloney had talked openly about his drug problems. Sources close to the company said Moloney had assured them that he had kicked his habit.

But Moloney soon began going on drug binges, sources said, disappearing for days at a time.

“It’s not like he was doing it every day. Some days he was terrific, then he just wouldn’t be there. He said it haunted him,” one source said.

Paradise pressured him to take a leave of absence in August to deal with his drug problem. Then, in September, the company finally terminated his contract, giving him a position as a creative consultant.

Born James David Moloney, the agent was seemingly at his peak in 1995, when he was one of nine CAA partners who was to inherit the agency when Ovitz, Meyer and Haber left. After having open-heart surgery to correct a congenital problem, it was said around Hollywood that Moloney had developed an addiction to painkillers. Still, he was expected to play a key role as the agency entered the post-Ovitz/Meyer era.

But Moloney left the next March as his drug problems--which started well before his surgery and involved much more than painkillers--spiraled out of control.

“He had a love-hate relationship with the business,” said producer Peter Guber, who considered Moloney a “dear, dear friend” whom he entertained at his ranch in Aspen, Colo., and went on river-rafting trips with in the Grand Canyon.

Guber said when Moloney became extraordinarily successful, “his flame burned very bright, and ultimately it was self-consuming.”

In a joint statement, the six current partners at the agency said, “Jay was our brother. No words can express our sadness and grief at this moment. Everyone who knew Jay loved him.”

The partners--CAA President Richard Lovett, Bryan Lourd, David O’Connor, Kevin Huvane, Rick Nicita and Lee Gabler--were handling the funeral arrangements for Moloney’s family.

Moloney is survived by his mother, Carole Johnson, and his two brothers, Sean and Darren, who reside in Los Angeles.