Sherry Lansing wants to make life change

Paramount Pictures boss Sherry Lansing, the movie mogul who helped bring "Titanic" to the silver screen, is bailing out of a sinking ship.

Lansing, an ex-model who is one of Hollywood's most powerful women, will step down as studio chief when her contract expires at the end of next year, it was announced yesterday.

The Tinseltown titan is best known as the force behind megahits like "Fatal Attraction," "Forrest Gump" and "Saving Private Ryan."

But she has been unable to snap a recent losing streak at Paramount, which has churned out a string of flops like "The Stepford Wives," the Ben Affleck bomb "Paycheck" and "K-19: The Widowmaker", the Daily News reported.

"I am so glad that I made this decision. There is no hidden agenda here. I have been in this job for 12 years and I am 60 years old. I want to make a life change and do something different," she said.

Lansing said that her new boss at Viacom Inc. owned studio, Viacom co-president Tom Freston, had asked her what she planned to do and she told him she would stay until the end of her contract in 2005 and help him find a successor.

"Tom Freston is fantastic and this has nothing to do with him. He asked me and I could not lie to him. You know, as they say, 60 is the new 50. We get to have a whole other chapter in our lives," she said, wrote Washington Post.