Hollywood Mogul and Tennis Star Ashok Amritraj Joins Cedars-Sinai Board of Governors
- The former professional tennis player turned Hollywood producer is also known for his philanthropic endeavors worldwide.
Ashok Amritraj, CEO of Hyde Park Entertainment Group has joined the Board of Governors of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, a non-profit hospital in Los Angeles, Deadline has announced.
The former professional tennis player turned Hollywood producer’s commitment to philanthropic endeavors worldwide includes the creation of diverse, inclusive and socially relevant content. In 2016, he was appointed a United Nations India Goodwill Ambassador and two years later, by decree of the President of the Republic of France, he was appointed a Chevalier (Knight) of the Ordre National du Merité.
This February, he was named as chair of a study on aging, a joint project of the United States National Institutes of Health and India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. The project will be funded through the nonprofit BrightFocus Foundation.
Amritraj’s producing career has spanned over 100 movies and 35-plus years including “Bringing Down the House,” “Walking Tall,” “Bandits,” “99 Homes,” “Original Sin,” “Life of Crime,” “Premonition” “and Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance,” among others.
He has also been building bridges between Hollywood and India and established the Hyde Park-Warner Music Asian Women Fellowship for women writers and directors from Asia and the Asian diaspora.
The former CEO of National Geographic Films, he is a former professional tennis champ, having worn the whites of Wimbledon, and winning the WTT championships with Jerry Buss’s LA Strings in 1978.
His younger brother Vijay Amritraj, a tennis icon and a successful film and television actor, will be the subject of a new documentary directed by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Sami Khan (“St. Louis Superman”). It will chart “Amritraj’s rise from his childhood in India, overcoming serious health issues, to his emergence as a top player in the 1970s and 1980s, defeating Jimmy Connors, Bjorn Borg, and John McEnroe in their primes,” says the synopsis of the documentary, according to Deadline. He and his older brother integral part of the Indian team that boycotted the 1974 Davis Cup Finals against South Africa to protest Apartheid.
The Amritraj siblings moved to Southern California in the mid-1970s, where they became early members of World Team Tennis – the all-star league co-founded by Billie Jean King. Vijay Amritraj played for Jerry Buss’ colorful Los Angeles Strings team before Buss took over the Lakers.