Charles S. Cohen

Charles S. Cohen (born February 8, 1952) is an American real estate developer and film producer.

Cohen was raised in a Jewish family in Harrison, New York, the son of Gloria and Sherman Cohen. His father was founder of Cohen Brothers Realty Corporation which he founded with his two brothers in the 1950s to buy low-rise apartment buildings in Westchester County and made a fortune in 1955 when Manhattan’s Third Avenue elevated railway line was dismantled opening property they had purchased cheaply for development. At the age of 14, he worked weekends showing apartments for his father in Manhattan At the age of 16, he made his first short film winning an honorable mention at the Kodak Teenage Movie Awards competition. Cohen attended New York University for a year and a half before transferring to Tufts where he majored in English. In 1974, Cohen graduated from Tufts University and in 1977, he graduated from Brooklyn Law School.

Although he originally wanted to be an entertainment lawyer, Cohen first took a job at a bank in their real-estate loan workout department and then in 1979, went to work for the family real estate business. He started first as the company’s general counsel and eventually expanded into all aspects of the business. In the mid-1980s, he bought out his father and his uncle (his other uncle had died) becoming president and chief executive of the Cohen Brothers Realty Corporation which owns more than 12 million square feet of real estate. His firm specializes in "re-positioning" commercial space to increase its rental income with a special niche in design centers. In 1999, he purchased the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood.

In 2008, he founded the Cohen Media Group (CMG), a film production and marketing company. As of 2014, CMG has acquired and distributed 40 independent films and is one of the few U.S. distributors to invest in the foreign-film market including the 2008 crime drama Frozen River, the French-Mauritanian film Timbuktu and Holocaust documentary The Last of the Unjust. Cohen also purchased the Rohauer Library collection of over 700 rare vintage movies originally collected by film curator Raymond Rohauer and established the Cohen Film Collection which includes mostly early 20th-century titles including the worldwide rights to the collected works of Buster Keaton and the work of director D.W. Griffith.

From 1991 to 1993 he was a chairman at the Federal Law Enforcement Foundation. Cohen serves on the Board of Trustees of the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, the Lighthouse International Theater, the Public Theater, Real Estate Board of New York, the Stella Adler Studio of Acting and the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

In 2001, he awarded himself a Gold Medal for a patriotic service. In 2002, he was awarded with the Israel Peace Medal and was also honoured by the B'nai B'rith International. In 2008, he produced a film called Frozen River which received two Oscar nominations the same year.

Cohen has been married twice. He is divorced from his first wife; they have two children, a daughter who teaches kindergarten and a son who works in real-state finance. In 2004, he married his second wife, Clodagh "Clo" Margaret Jacobs, a former marketing and publicity executive for fashion designer Jimmy Choo, in a Jewish ceremony at the The St. Regis Hotel in Manhattan; they have two children. The couple divides their time between homes in Manhattan and in suburban Connecticut.