(FORTUNE Magazine) – FADE IN on an Asian warrior, perched atop a dark stallion, sword at the ready. He is not just any feudal lord; he is the leader, the Shogun, who demands strict obedience and loyalty. Cross him and beware. Quickly, cut to Los Angeles. The same man now stands in the California sunshine. He is the Hollywood Shogun: Michael Ovitz, president of Creative Artists Agency, with revenues of roughly $65 million. This year alone, Ovitz has signed up Robin Williams, Michael Jackson, and L.A. Laker Magic Johnson. Unlike the old- fashioned studio heads, whose role he has usurped, Ovitz, 42, is publicity shy, rarely giving interviews. ''I'm not one to speak about myself,'' he says. ''I like to speak about the people around me.'' That is as it should be. It's the people around him who make Ovitz, a martial arts enthusiast, one of the most powerful men in Hollywood. CAA manages the lion's share of filmdom's bankable names: Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman, Robert DeNiro, and many other stars, plus a host of writers, producers, composers, and directors. Ovitz combines several of his clients into package deals that he offers to motion picture and television studios. As a result, he can lay claim to a major role in some of the highest- grossing films of all time -- Tootsie, Ghostbusters, and Fatal Attraction. In a sense, Ovitz was a born warrior. At Birmingham High in Los Angeles, where his contemporaries included Sally Field and Michael Milken, Ovitz was, in the memory of a former teacher, ''someone the kids looked up to, a leader and a doer.'' A course at UCLA introduced him to Oriental philosophy. Upon graduation in 1968 he joined the William Morris Agency, and in 1975 he and four others broke away to form CAA. Married, with three children, Ovitz seems nervously aware of his good fortune. When builders broke ground on an I. M. Pei-designed headquarters for CAA last year, Ovitz had the Oriental ritual of Feng-Shui performed to be sure the building was aligned with nature, so harmony would reign within. Says he: ''We didn't want to tempt the hands of the gods.'' That's the attitude a lot of Hollywood people take toward Michael Ovitz.