Ari Gold (Entourage)

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Ari Gold
Entourage character

Hometown:
Known Relatives:	Mrs. Ari (wife) Sarah Gold (daughter)
Profession:	Owner/Partner Miller/Gold Talent Agency Vincent Chase's former agent
Significant Other:	Married to Mrs. Ari
Played by:	Jeremy Piven
Key Episode:	Entourage (Pilot)

Ari Gold is a character on the dramedy television series Entourage. He is played by Jeremy Piven.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Ari Gold was Vince's agent and "one of the most powerful men in Hollywood". A workaholic with a quick temper, constant sarcasm, frenetic physical presence, an undergraduate degree from Harvard and a JD/MBA from the University of Michigan, Ari is one of the program's most popular characters. It is purported in Season 3 that Ari was a brother of the Zeta Beta Tau fraternity in college. But despite being a powerful presence at the agency (Ari singlehandedly set out to destroy a former assistant turned rival agent for trying to steal Vincent), Ari is dominated by his wife at the home (whom we are led to believe has a large inheritance from her father), who orders her husband around. Ari and Eric Murphy are the primary influences in Vincent's life. But it is clear that Vincent trusts and follows Eric's advice much more than he does Ari's. This makes for a tense relationship between Eric and Ari. While neither one particularly likes the other, they realize that they are in a marriage of necessity and grow to become close comrades. Their personal and professional relationship shatters at the end of the Season 3 finale when Eric and Vince fire Ari due to his shrewd business tactics causing Vince to lose a much sought after role of Joey Ramone in a biographical film documenting The Ramones rise and fall.

Towards the end of season two, we discover that the agency that Ari runs is actually owned by a man named Terrance who has emerged from retirement seemingly due to his desire to replace Ari as Vincent's agent. The conflict that arises between Ari and Terrance reaches a boiling point in season two, leading to Ari's termination following the exposure of a coup d'état being planned by Ari. Ari's character is reportedly based on the real-life Hollywood superagent Ari Emanuel^[1], who broke away from mega-agency ICM to form The Endeavor Agency, which represents such stars as Vin Diesel and Larry David, both of whom are represented on the show by the fictional Ari Gold. Ari Emanuel also once represented Jeremy Piven himself. Real-life "Ari Gold" produced the CD of one of Grenier's bands, The Honey Brothers, in 2003. ^[2]

Spoilers end here.

[edit] Trivia

Ari owns among many other mobile phones a Treo 650 and a Vertu mobile handset, a black 2005 BMW 750 and $900 shoes.
During one issue of MAD Magazine Ari is renamed Acrid in a parody of Entourage and is said to be based of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin.