Walk along Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills on a weekday lunchtime and you just may come across what is, for Los Angeles, a comparatively rare sight. Here, in a city that prizes itself on its relaxed approach to business, where casual attire is practically de rigueur in the workplace, there are men wearing suits – smart suits, sharp suits – moving rapidly, mobile phones clamped to ears or heads bowed over fingers stabbing at BlackBerrys and iPhones.

These besuited men are talent agents and their stomping ground is the stretch of Wilshire and Santa Monica Boulevards that links Beverly Hills with the skyscrapers of nearby Century City, the business district built on land formerly owned by the nearby 20th Century Fox studio.

Hollywood's four biggest agencies, representing more than 70 per cent of the entertainment industry's actors, directors, musicians and writers, are headquartered here. Creative Artists Agency, the biggest player in town, is in an imposing Century City building widely referred to outside the company as “the Death Star”. A short distance away in the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer tower is International Creative Management, the agency that is home to, among others, Beyoncé and rising Hollywood starlet Megan Fox. Back in Beverly Hills, a stone's throw from the gleaming Beverly Wilshire hotel, are the offices of William Morris Endeavor Entertainment, formed last year by the merger of Hollywood's most venerable agency with one of its youngest. Across the street are the headquarters of United Talent Agency, where clients include Johnny Depp, Harrison Ford and Gwyneth Paltrow.