Raised in suburban Wilmette, Illinois, outside Chicago, Emanuel is the brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, NIH bioethicist Ezekiel J. Emanuel, and adopted sister Shoshana Emanuel. His father, the Jerusalem-born.
Dr. Benjamin M. Emanuel is a pediatrician, who was militantly active in the Irgun, a Zionist para military organization. His mother, Martha Emanuel was a civil rights activist, and the one-time owner of a Chicago-area rock and roll club. As a child, Ari was diagnosed as both hyperactive and dyslexic, and his mother spent hours helping him to learn to read. She also took him into anti-war protests. He is a graduate of New Trier West High School and of Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota where he was roommates with noted director Peter Berg. He is married to Sarah Addington.
After graduation from college in 1983, Emmanuel played professional racquetball, and lived for a time in Paris and New York City. Emanuel then worked at the Hollywood agencies Creative Artists Agency, Inter Talent, and International Creative Management(ICM). Emmanuel and three other agents devised a plan to leave ICM and start a boutique agency of their own. In March 1995, after an assistant was caught removing files after hours, Emanuel was fired by Jeff Berg. He went on to co-found Endeavor Agency.
Emmanuel gained widespread media attention in July 2006 when he called on Hollywood to blacklist Mel Gibson because of Gibson's anti-Semitic remarks during his DUI arrest. Emanuel wrote, "People in entertainment community, whether Jew or Gentile, need to demonstrate that they understand how much is at stake in this by professionally shunning Mel Gibson and refusing to work with him, even if it means a sacrifice to their bottom line." At that time, Gibson was represented by rival talent agency ICM. Gavin de Becker responded with a two-page open letter to Emanuel in the Hollywood Reporter.
In 2007, Emanuel publicly backed Chris Albrecht after Albrecht was fired from HBO for a domestic violence arrest, preceded by rumors of three earlier incidents of violence against women. Emanuel wrote, "If Hollywood is going to give Mel Gibson a second chance, and sports fans are going to cheer on stars like Jason Kidd, Latrell Sprewell, and Stephen Jackson who have made similar mistakes, why not Chris Albrecht?" Emanuel later helped Albrecht land his next job at IMG. Ari Emanuel has hosted fundraisers for the Democratic Party.
