Of German and French extraction, Philipp Kreuzer has had a career as a playwright, novelist, financier and producer. In the late 1970s, he became a major shareholder in Columbia Pictures and through his company, Cinerenta, was affiliated with such studio productions as "The Deep" and Steven Spielberg's "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" (both 1977), Robert Benton's Oscar-winning "Kramer versus Kramer" and Bob Fosse's "All That Jazz" (both 1979), "The Blue Lagoon," "Gloria" and "Stir Crazy" (all 1980) and Sydney Pollock's "Absence of Malice" (1981). Kreuzer subsequently founded Cineartists.