The spectacular rise and fall of Brett Ratner, Hollywood's playboy prince

Brett Ratner has been holidaying with Mike Tyson of late. The director has chronicled the St Barts getaway on Instagram, naturally, accompanied by office frame-ready inspirational quotes from Tyson. “Whatever you want, especially when you’re striving to be the best in the world at something, there’ll always be disappointments, and you can’t be emotionally tied to them, cos’ they’ll break your spirit”, reads one. Another: “I really think a champion is defined not by their wins but by how they can recover when they fall.”

Ratner has fallen. He has attempted recovery before. It worked: a 2013 cover story on Ratner was called The Redemption Of Brett Ratner. All trumpets blazed. Over the past 15 years or so, since first emerging as a director of big, bright music videos, his films had made around $2bn at the box-office with a motormouth, and a lifestyle, to match – the trips on private jets, the vintage Hollywood friends (Robert Evans, Roman Polanski, Warren Beatty), the Beverly Hills house with a disco in the basement and a revolving door of A-list partiers. Credibility was not his friend, and he didn’t seem to care.

But things got ugly. He’d been shamed in 2011, having mouthed off about sleeping with Lindsay Lohan when “she was really young” and, in a Q&A promoting his caper Tower Heist, saying that “rehearsal is for fags” – for that he suddenly found himself not producing the 2012 Oscars (a ‘forced resignation’, as The Hollywood Reporter put it).

But in 2013 he was back, signing a humungous production deal with Warner Bros, which would go on to make him fortunes – he reportedly pocketed $40m alone from investing in Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity. But then… Well.

With #MeToo’s launch in 2017, Ratner was throttled. Seven actresses spoke to the LA Times, accusing him of sexual harassment and misconduct. He denied the claims, but the Warner Bros production deal was not renewed. Since then he has been relatively quiet, but a few weeks ago his company RatPac Entertainment bought the life rights to WallStreetBets founders Jaime and Joel Rogzinski, planning to make a film about January’s GameStop stock drama.

Then last week it was reported that he’s gearing up to make a biopic about 1980s lip-sync sensations Milli Vanilli. The Time’s Up movement responded with their own statement. “You don’t get to go away for a couple of years and then resurface and act like nothing happened,” they said. That quote’s not as likely to go on the office wall. (The film's production partner, Millennium Media, has now pulled out.)

“I’m the opposite of what people think I am,” Ratner said in that Hollywood Reporter profile, keen to dispel the frat boy image he’d enthusiastically cultivated over the years. Ratner was raised by his mother and her parents in Miami Beach. His dad having left, he credited Alvin Malnik, a restaurant owner, businessman and attorney who had represented major Mob boss Meyer Lansky, as his father figure and role model.

Ratner collected local connections as he grew up. Malnik mentored him. They knew the Miami cops. Ratner began hanging out as film and television productions descended on the area, blagging himself an extra role for a scene in Brian De Palma’s Scarface, hanging out on set of Miami Vice.

After a stint in film school he began making music videos before moving into film with 1997’s action comedy Money Talks, hitting big with 1998’s Rush Hour. He did Red Dragon, 2002’s third Anthony Hopkins / Hannibal Lecter outing, and 2006’s X Men: The Last Stand. A couple of other Rush Hour sequels, and a couple of other films, the last one being 2014’s Hercules. His work is often fun, mostly financially successful, and fantastically unmemorable.

He’s never been shy of promoting his box-office numbers. He did so when Matthew Vaughn, at the time on the way to making X-Men prequel First Class, was quoted as saying that Ratner’s The Last Stand was “wall to wall noise and drama” – Ratner’s response after First Class was released was to tweet a comparison of the takings.

He has derided the industry’s championing of the Rotten Tomatoes reviews aggregate website as a marker of success, calling it “the destruction of our business,” which is an absolutely fair point but also notable to consider that Ratner’s films have low to mediocre scores.

When asked in 2004 what he’d be if not a filmmaker he said, “I’d be a gangster! I’d own casinos – I love gangsters.” Curiously in the same interview he also said he was “spiritual. And moral.” That turned out not to be the case. Ratner, who says he’s never smoked, drank alcohol or taken any drugs, has nevertheless been the poster boy for partying over the years.

The downstairs disco at Hilhaven Lodge was built by former resident Allan Carr (producer of Grease), and for a time was frequented by mega-producer Robert Evans (who was Ratner’s best friend), Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton. Ratner appeared as himself on Entourage, because of course he did. “I suggested we shoot it at my house,” he explained in 2011. “We tried to re-create what it's like. It was a little over the top. I usually don't have 30 girls in bikinis by my pool. There are usually more like 50.”

The fun stopped in 2011. That, with Ratner promoting Tower Heist, was when the “rehearsal is for fags” and the Lindsay Lohan comment spilled out. He also spoke of actress Olivia Munn. To be precise: “I banged her a few times… but I forgot her.”

A few days later, on the Howard Stern radio show, he said that was a lie. “I said I banged her three times, which isn’t true.” So far, so not very moral. He then apologised for the “fags” comment, resigning from producing the Oscars. 2017, though, saw the allegations in the LA Times, including from Olivia Munn and Natasha Henstridge. All of the allegations were heinous, all awful. He denied them all. “It feels as if I keep going up against the same bully at school who just won’t quit,” said Munn.

Soon after the LA Times report, Elliot Page wrote a Facebook essay detailing how, when Ratner was directing them on X Men: The Last Stand, he outed them in front of the cast and crew, telling a woman in regards to Page: “You should f___ her to make her realise she’s gay.” Co-star Anna Paquin stood by Page, saying that she was there at the time and that it happened. In 2018, Warner Bros said that they would not be renewing their deal with RatPac.

And here we are on the comeback trail. Ratner may well make a film about GameStop. He may well make a film about Milli Vanilli. Then again, he may well find out that time does not heal all wounds. In thrall to old Hollywood, he absorbed himself in a lifestyle – and perhaps, attitudes and actions – that will not be tolerated now. It’s difficult to imagine a redemption this time around. The basement disco might be intact, but the party might be over.