Barkin, Perelman settle dispute over movie company

(01-18) 11:18 PST NEW YORK, (AP) --

Cosmetics magnate Ronald Perelman has ended his legal fight with ex-wife Ellen Barkin over a movie production company they started while married but squabbled over for years after divorcing, according to court records and Barkin's lawyers.

The Revlon Inc. chairman and the "Sea of Love" actress settled the lawsuits over Applehead Pictures, according to Barkin lawyer Jacob W. Buchdahl. Court records show the cases were closed Friday.

"The case is over," Buchdahl said, declining to discuss the terms or comment further. Perelman spokeswoman Christine M. Taylor declined to comment Tuesday.

The settlement came after an appeals court ruled against Perelman last month in one of the lawsuits, saying he owed more than $4.3 million to Applehead. The sum represented contributions he'd promised the company, plus interest. At the time, Taylor said Perelman planned to keep pressing his claims.

Perelman — whose net worth Forbes estimates at $11 billion — had acknowledged he didn't pay $3.4 million he'd pledged to put into the company, but he said Barkin and others mismanaged it and didn't honor their own commitments to it.

Barkin's camp has called his allegations frivolous and said he was reneging on a business deal.

Barkin, now 56, and Perelman, 68, married in 2000. The "Ocean's Thirteen" and "The Big Easy" actress was his fourth wife.

When they divorced, Barkin received a settlement that Perelman's spokeswoman has described as "enormous" but declined to quantify. Barkin also sold off jewelry Perelman gave her at an auction that fetched more than $20 million; she told an interviewer the pieces were "not memories I want to wear out every day."

The Applehead Pictures dispute at times took on a personal tone. Perelman had argued, for instance, that the actress had broken their separation agreement — and therefore his continuing responsibilities to Applehead — by not taking steps to obtain a get, or a Jewish divorce document.

Applehead was a producer of last year's "Letters to Juliet," a romantic comedy starring Gael Garcia Bernal, Amanda Seyfried and Vanessa Redgrave.