Cooke Rejects Actors Guild CEO Post

John F. Cooke, named last week as chief executive of the Screen Actors Guild, said Thursday that he won’t be taking the job after all.

Cooke, a former Walt Disney Co. executive, was named to the expanded chief executive job June 25 after a search that spanned four months and 200 candidates. Members of the SAG executive search committee and more than half of the 105 board members voted unanimously to appoint Cooke, who is currently an executive vice president at the J. Paul Getty Trust.

But Cooke bowed out after receiving a letter late last week, signed by nine members of the SAG board who questioned his authority and expanded responsibilities defined in the five-year contract.

Those actors were: Melissa Gilbert, Amy Aquino, Nat Benchley, Paul Christie, Eileen Henry, Paul Reggio, Anni Long, Keri Tombazian and Cynthia Vance.

Cooke had planned to review SAG’s organization, long criticized as being bloated, and address such issues as rocky relations with agents and production in foreign countries. Cooke was to be paid $390,000 a year to succeed the group’s former national executive director, Ken Orsatti, who retired in January.

The sudden turnabout is an embarrassment for the notoriously fractious guild, which otherwise was celebrating the successful end of contract negotiations Tuesday night.

In a written statement, Cooke said, “To search for a leader without the ability to give him or her clear CEO authority as well as a clear mandate is a recipe for failure.”

Because Cooke had already given notice at the J. Paul Getty Trust, he said he would go ahead and leave that position in September as scheduled.