| abstract | - Leopold began his work on films as an actor before being signed on to serve as assistant production manager and casting director for John Huston's 1979 drama Wise Blood, starring future Star Trek: Voyager guest actor Brad Dourif. After brief stints as an actor (including an appearance in Wise Blood), casting director (The Dukes of Hazzard), a location manager (for films such as 1983's The Big Chill), and as an assistant director (including the 1981 film Great White), he then he began producing in the mid-1980s. He was the supervising producer for Terry Gilliams' acclaimed 1988 comic fantasy The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (starring John Neville in the title role) and the executive producer of the 1993 Luis Mandoki comedy Born Yesterday (which featured the likes of Michael Ensign and Celeste Yarnall in the cast), among other projects. For Paramount, Leopold was the co-producer of the hit 1999 thriller The General's Daughter, starring James Cromwell and Clarence Williams III, and the 2000 horror/thriller Bless the Child, featuring Peter Mensah. He later executive produced the Paramount-released Ben Affleck action-thrillers The Sum of All Fears (2002, also starring James Cromwell as well as Bruce McGill) and Paycheck (2004). More recently, Leopold worked with Star Trek producer and director J.J. Abrams as the executive producer of the 2006 Paramount release Mission: Impossible III. From the time he began producing films in the mid-1980s up until 2002, Leopold also worked as a film production manager. In this capacity, he handled the budgets for such films as John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness (1987) and They Live (1988, starring Meg Foster and featuring Leopold as a "depressed human"), the 1989 action thriller Tango & Cash (featuring Marc Alaimo, Roy Brocksmith, Teri Hatcher, Clint Howard, Glenn Morshower, Michael J. Pollard and Phil Rubenstein), and the aforementioned General's Daughter and Sum of All Fears. He is currently producing the drama Red Soil for Turning Point Pictures. In addition, he owns and operates an ice cream parlor, Leopold's Ice Cream, in Savannah, Georgia, which has been in his family for generations. Interestingly, the store was designed by Academy Award-nominated art director Daniel Lomino (Close Encounters of the Third Kind). [2]
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