unit. In 1978, Steel joined Paramount Pictures as Director of Merchandising and Licensing, where she planned marketing tie-ins for Star Trek: The Motion Picture. She was promoted to vice president, and then vice president of production in 1980, senior vice president of production in 1983. She was a protégé of Barry Diller, the CEO of Paramount at the time. While at Paramount, Steel's support for Flashdance (1983) and the movie's massive success, helped secure her the position of president of production for the studio in 1985. She also oversaw Top Gun (1986), Fatal Attraction (1987), and The Accused (1988), among others. Steel was the second woman to head a major film production department (the first being Sherry Lansing at Twentieth-Century Fox and the third being Nina Jacobson at Buena Vista). Columbia Pictures Steel became president of Columbia Pictures in 1987. She was the first woman studio head. The first film she approved as president was Casualties of War; Pauline Kael said that "whatever else [Steel] does, she should be honored for that decision, because twenty years later this is still risky material." Under her tenure the studio also released When Harry Met Sally... which had been developed and produced independently by Castle Rock productions. Steel's brief two-year tenure was marked by continued turmoil and losses, continuing a string of bad news begun under David Puttnam before her appointment. She was asked to leave the studio in 1989 and shortly thereafter Coca-Cola spun off the studio and exited the movie business; Columbia was thereafter sold to Sony Corporation of Japan. She resigned from this position on January 8, 1990. Independent producing Steel Pictures In 1990, Steel formed Steel Pictures in a production deal at The Walt Disney Company. She left Disney in 1993 after making two films, 1993's Cool Runnings, a comedy about the Jamaican bobsled team, and Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit. Cool Runnings was her first Disney film as a producer. Atlas Entertainment In 1994, Steel formed Atlas Entertainment with husband Charles Roven and Bob Cavallo. They had a three-year first look deal with Turner Pictures. Her final two films before her death from cancer were Fallen and City of Angels. Memoir In 1993, she wrote a memoir, They Can Kill You But They Can't Eat You, which described her time at Columbia. In the book Steel describes finding out – after giving birth to her daughter