Sherry Robb, Literary Agent, Talent Manager and Producer, Dies at 81

Sherry Robb, a literary agent, talent manager and producer whose career spanned more than five decades across publishing, television and film, has died. She was 81.

Robb, who battled congestive heart disease for two decades, died Feb. 14. A memorial service has been set for 1:30 p.m. on June 9 at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

Robb helped bring to publication Robert Graysmith’s Zodiac, the 1986 true-crime book about unsolved serial murders in San Francisco in the late 1960s that inspired David Fincher’s Zodiac (2007), starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr. and Mark Ruffalo.

She also played a critical role in launching the screenwriting career of Ronald D. Moore (Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), selling his first two scripts to Paramount.

Based on an idea that Robb developed while listening to Betty White talk about how her animals helped her recover from the loss of her husband, Password host Allen Ludden, she came up with Pet Love, a 1983 book that launched the beloved actress’ literary career.

She also was a guiding force behind Mary Wilson’s 1986 book, Dreamgirl: My Life as a Supreme, one of the best-selling music autobiographies in history.

The singer and White were just two of the 100 or so first-time authors that Robb guided during her long career.

After receiving a bachelor’s degree from Whittier College and a master’s of social work from Smith College, Sherry Ann Robb became a therapist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and a teacher at Boston State College, Tufts University and the University of Massachusetts.

She worked for five years in New York City for a major publishing company, then teamed with Bart Andrews, who had written a 1976 book about TV’s I Love Lucy, to form a literary firm, the Andrews & Robb Agency, in 1981.

She split with Andrews in 1989 and to launch her own business, AFH Talent Agency, then founded The Robb Co., a boutique management firm dedicated to representing actors and writers, in 2003.

In 2020, she co-founded the Robb Squad Film Co. alongside director Marc Martinez and produced the 2024 feature The Memory in My Heart, which fulfilled her dream of spotlighting her talent roster through original content.

Inducted into the Personal Managers Hall of Fame in 2019, Robb also served as a judge for UCLA’s Script Competition Showcase and consulted for the film masters program at USC.