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Newsweek has an "exit interview" with outgoing, trailblazing Paramount head Sherry Lansing, and after Lansing assures us that she's leaving to open a new chapter in her life, not forced out by her Viacom overlords, interviewer Sean Smith gets right down to some dirty business:

The Hollywood rumor mill worked you over pretty hard in the early days. For years people gossiped that you got jobs from men because you were intimate with them.

There was no truth to any of that, of course. None. But if you're the first, it goes with the territory. People are always making up reasons why you got the job, rather than understanding that you got it because you worked hard. Then you get older, and no one says that anymore. [Laughs]

Fair enough. Not every female executive in Hollywood sleeps her way up the studio ladder, even if they work on the lot where Robert Evans has a waterbed. (Well, we really want him to have one, anyway.) Even so, Lansing isn't afraid of her womanly side.

You've always seemed comfortable being feminine. I remember the first time I met you, seven years ago, you hugged me.

[Laughs] I like to hug people. I don't hug everybody, but I like contact. Part of being in the movie business is wanting to reach out to people, to connect.

There you have it: "Hugging" is the new "fucking your way to the top." Give it a try, but please be careful not to break your nose on the glass ceiling.