Marty Singer (right) with one of his latest clients, the Hollywood producer Brett Ratner Credit : Michael Kovac/Getty Images for Jewish National Fund
Take it from Charlie Sheen: “Marty Singer might be the only person who’s f----- more people in Hollywood than I have.” Few will recognise the legal bull dog by name, but you’ll undoubtedly recognise the numerous distressed celebrities Singer has represented in his time.
A self-made industry titan charging $950 an hour, the 64-year-old lawyer put himself through New York law schools while supporting his Auschwitz survivor mother, before moving to Los Angeles in 1980 to set up his own law firm.
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A more impressively consistent and fastidious lawyer than his California-bred rivals, Singer is known for his doom-laden warnings to journalists and tabloid reporters whenever one of his clients is written about negatively.
A typical Singer letter threatens all sorts of apocalyptic hellfire if a retraction isn’t issued, criss-crossing legal jargon with melodramatic bluster. It’s an approach that has more often than not successfully scared off whoever was at one point eager to publish the potentially untrue tale.
Sheen, one of his most prolific clients, has described him as being like a masseuse: “He’s hands-on, gets paid by the hour, and you always, always — always — get a happy ending.”
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Over the last couple of years, Singer has represented several names involved in high-profile sexual harassment scandals, from Brett Ratner to Bill Cosby. In 2018 Ratner dropped his defamation suit against actress Melanie Kohler, who had accused him of sexual assault; while Singer’s relationship with Cosby ended in 2015 under mysterious circumstances. Where once the scenarios Singer was roped in to bury felt mildly humorous, they’re now far murkier, reflecting a cultural mood that is taking a second look at things once so casually giggled over.
Perhaps, then, his latest choice of celebrity lawsuit is a reflection of his own recognition of that mood: an Atlanta newspaper is suing Clint Eastwood’s latest film over its portrayal of one of their female journalists having traded sex for stories. But instead of defending Eastwood, this time Singer is batting for the little guy (or girl, in this case). He remains, in any case, one of the most powerful figures in celebrity litigation, taking a legal pick-axe to invasive photographs, blood-curdling bird noises, the damaging effects of eating too much sushi, and many, many more. Here are just some of his greatest hits:
“Entirely false and malicious” and “extremely defamatory and damaging, ” is how Singer described the portrayal of real-life news reporter Kathy Scruggs in Clint Eastwood’s latest film, Richard Jewell, due to be released next month. Atlanta’s leading newspaper, the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, made the somewhat surprising choice to hire Singer, so often the defender of the gaffs or worse of the likes of Eastwood himself, to take the celebrity actor and director to court.
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Richard Jewell, which tells the story of the FBI’s investigation into the bombings at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, drops some pretty heavy hints that Scruggs slept with an agent to obtain the story. Olivia Wilde, the actress who plays Scruggs, has defended both Scruggs and the film, saying, “We don’t say James Bond isn’t a real spy because he gets his information sometimes by sleeping with women as sources.
Singer first came to tabloid prominence in 1999, when Sylvester Stallone acquired his services after being sued by five former household employees. The staff alleged that Stallone and his wife Jennifer Flavin subjected them to “bizarre orders” and fired them without full pay, forcing them to seek $1.5 million in damages.
Among the “bizarre orders” the employees alleged was a stern warning to never speak to or look into the eyes of Stallone’s rumpologist mother Jackie, later a Celebrity Big Brother star. But the staff claimed they were forced to break this rule when Jackie gave them all gifts for Christmas. Namely, pens and signed photographs of herself. The claimants alleged that when Stallone and Flavin discovered the rule breach, they immediately lost their jobs.
Martin D Singer, Usa
Singer vehemently denied the accusations were true. “They figure you sue a celebrity, the celebrity’s going to want to settle, ” he said. He later claimed that the staff were hired on a short-term contract from a temp agency, and that one of the claimants wore high heels to clean the house.
In 2004, the cruise liner Radisson Mariner unveiled a star-studded line-up of celebrity geriatrics participating in a theatre production on the high seas. The names scheduled to appear were a hotbed of ageing A-listers, among them Gena Rowlands, Eartha Kitt, Ed Asner, Jerry Orbach and… Marisa Tomei?
Tomei was reportedly appalled that the liner placed an ad in the New Yorker claiming she was involved in the production, likely due to its OAP-by-association optics, and roped in Singer to help her out.
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Singer ran to Page Six slamming the ad, insisting that Tomei was never signed up to appear on the cruise and that her movie career is thriving. He also threatened legal action against the liner.
In an infamous Broadway scandal, the Entourage actor Jeremy Piven dropped out of a revival of David Mamet’s Speed-the-Plow in 2009 citing “mercury poisoning”. Piven blamed the illness on his over-fondness for sushi, spawning a litany of jokes at his expense.
But Singer, acting as Piven’s lawyer, didn’t see the funny side, especially when Mamet ran to the press claiming that Piven told him “he discovered that he had a very high level of mercury. So my understanding is that he is leaving show business to pursue a career as a thermometer.”
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Singer’s case later convinced an independent arbitrator to side with Piven’s version of events, despite the actor being spotted partying with Britney Spears when he was apparently laid up in bed.
A vindicated Piven expressed his joy to the New York Times, saying, “All we can ask for is our day in court, I was lucky enough to get it, and the truth prevailed. It’s a beautiful thing.”
But Speed-the-Plow producers rejected the outcome, declaring in a statement: “While we respect the decision, we strongly disagree with it. We remain eternally grateful to everyone who helped make the wonderful production of Speed-the-Plow possible, especially the artists who created it, and the many who had to deal with very difficult and trying circumstances.”
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When Demi Moore took to the cover of W Magazine in 2009, several outlets noticed a curious oddity affecting her left hip. Namely that a chunk of it seemed to be missing. The Photoshop gaffe went quickly viral, being picked up by several media outlets. Including The , which went one step further and speculated that Moore’s head may have been placed on an entirely different woman’s body.
But Moore was apparently upset by the speculation, recruiting Singer to send stern letters to an array of news websites demanding the stories be taken down and retracted.
“My client’s hip, waist or legs were not altered, retouched, or photoshopped for the cover image, ” Singer wrote. “False claims or insinuations that she secretly uses extraordinary artificial means to alter her appearance are extremely damaging.”
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Jezebel, one of the many outlets to receive letters, issued an incredibly sarcastic apology, writing: “We would like to take this opportunity to sincerely apologise if we cast aspersions on, or in any way hurt the feelings of Ms. Moore’s left hip, waist, or legs. Our only intention was to call attention to distorted and disturbing-looking magazine covers... and the editors, photographers, art directors and retouchers who commission and create them.”
When reports surfaced that Whitney Houston, in the midst of her 2009 comeback, had experienced a “horrifying backstage collapse” and was headed for rehab, Singer made it clear that the National Enquirer report was a vicious lie.
Stating that Houston wasn’t so much headed to a rehabilitation clinic as she was to Paris for the rest of her tour, he added: “It is ironic that at the same time that the Enquirer claims it is deserving of a Pulitzer for journalism [for breaking the John Edwards/Rielle Hunter affair that same year], the tabloid is continuously publishing stories comprised of brazen lies cobbled together from claims made from anonymous sources.”
Marty Singer — Gawker
While Houston didn’t check herself into rehab, she was found dead three years later from the effects of heart disease and cocaine use.
In 2011, the Pulp Fiction filmmaker called in Singer’s services while filing a lawsuit against his neighbour, the American Beauty screenwriter Alan Ball, claiming the noise stemming from his menagerie of exotic birds was impacting his ability to write.
Tarantino’s deposition targeted the “blood-curdling, prehistoric sounding screams” that emanated from Ball’s birdcage, demanding he place them in a soundproof aviary after an amicable attempt to resolve the matter proved ill-productive.
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Don’t you dare try and suggest Kim Kardashian did something for publicity, or she’ll set Marty Singer on you. That was the lesson learned from an incident in 2011, in which Kardashian took legal action against a man claiming to be her former publicist.
The man in question alleged that Kardashian married her infamously short-lived husband Kris Humphries despite knowing she wasn’t in love with him, and had deliberately staged moments in
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