Steven Spielberg

"Spielberg" redirects here. For other uses, see Spielberg (disambiguation).

Steven Spielberg KBE
Spielberg in 2023
Born	Steven Allan Spielberg (1946-12-18) December 18, 1946 Cincinnati, Ohio, US
Education	California State University, Long Beach (BA)
Occupations	Director producer screenwriter
Years active	1959–present
Organizations	Amblin Entertainment Amblin Partners DreamWorks Pictures
Works	Filmography unrealized projects
Spouses	Amy Irving ​ ​ (m. 1985; div. 1989)​ Kate Capshaw ​ (m. 1991)​
Children	6, including Sasha, Sawyer, and Destry
Father	Arnold Spielberg
Relatives	Anne Spielberg (sister) Nancy Spielberg (sister) Jessica Capshaw (stepdaughter)
Awards	Full list
Signature

Steven Allan Spielberg (/ˈspiːlbɜːrɡ/; born December 18, 1946) is an American filmmaker. A major figure of the New Hollywood era and pioneer of the modern blockbuster, Spielberg is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers in the history of cinema and is the highest-grossing film director of all time, with his films having earned almost $11 billion worldwide. Among other accolades, he has received three Academy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, four BAFTA Awards, twelve Emmy Awards, a Tony Award, and a Grammy Award, as well as the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1995, an honorary knighthood in 2001, the Kennedy Center Honor in 2006, the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2009, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015, and the National Medal of Arts in 2023. According to Forbes, he is one of the world's wealthiest celebrities, with a net worth of at least $5.3 billion. He is one of 22 people to achieve EGOT status.

Spielberg was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. Growing up in Haddonfield, New Jersey and Phoenix, Arizona, he moved to California and studied film in college. Starting his career in television, Spielberg made his directorial debut with Duel (1971). His theatrical debut was The Sugarland Express (1974), which began his decades-long collaboration with composer John Williams. He became a household name with Jaws (1975) and earned further critical and commercial success with Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) and the original Indiana Jones trilogy (1981–1989). He explored drama in The Color Purple (1985) and Empire of the Sun (1987).

Spielberg directed the historical war epics Schindler's List (1993)—which has often been listed as one of the greatest films ever made—and Saving Private Ryan (1998), both of which won him the Academy Award for Best Director with the former also earning him Best Picture. He has also directed the science fiction films Jurassic Park (1993)—which became the highest-grossing film at the time—A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), Minority Report (2002), War of the Worlds (2005), Ready Player One (2018) and Disclosure Day (2026); the historical dramas Amistad (1997), Munich (2005), War Horse (2011), Lincoln (2012), Bridge of Spies (2015) and The Post (2017); the comedies Catch Me If You Can (2002) and The Terminal (2004); the animated film The Adventures of Tintin (2011); the musical West Side Story (2021); and the family drama The Fabelmans (2022).

Spielberg co-founded Amblin Entertainment and DreamWorks Pictures, and he has served as a producer for many successful films and television series, among them Poltergeist (1982), Gremlins (1984), Back to the Future (1985), An American Tail (1986), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), Animaniacs (1993), Pinky and the Brain (1995), Twister (1996), Band of Brothers (2001) and Transformers (2007). Several of Spielberg's works are considered among the greatest films in history, and some are among the highest-grossing ever. Seven of his films have been inducted into the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant". In 2013, Time listed him as one of the 100 most influential people, and in 2023, Spielberg was the recipient of the first ever Time 100 Impact Award in the US.

Early life and education

Steven Allan Spielberg was born on December 18, 1946, in Cincinnati, Ohio, the eldest child and only son of four children. His mother, Leah Adler (née Posner), was a concert pianist who ran a kosher dairy restaurant, and his father, Arnold, was an electrical engineer involved in the development of computers. His immediate family were Reform Jewish/Orthodox Jewish. Spielberg's paternal grandparents were Ukrainian Jews; his grandmother Rebecca (née Chechi), was from Sudylkiv, and his grandfather Shmuel Spielberg was from Kamianets-Podilskyi. Spielberg has three younger sisters: Anne, Sue, and Nancy. At their home in Cincinnati, his grandmother taught English to Holocaust survivors. They, in turn, taught him numbers:

One man in particular, I kept looking at his numbers–his number tattooed on his forearm ... he started – you know, when–during the dinner break, when everybody was eating and not learning, he would point to the numbers. And he would say, that is a two, and that is a four. And then he'd say, and this is a eight, and that's a one. And I'll never forget this. And he said, and that's a nine. And then he crooked his arm and inverted his arm and said, and see, it becomes a six. It's magic. And now it's a nine, and now it's a six, and now it's a nine and now it's a six. And that's really how I learned my numbers for the first time ... the irony of all that, and the gift of that lesson, never really dawned on me until I was much older.

In 1952, his family moved to Haddon Township, New Jersey, after his father was hired by RCA. Spielberg attended Hebrew school from 1953 to 1957, in classes taught by Rabbi Albert L. Lewis. In early 1957, the family moved to Phoenix, Arizona. Spielberg had a bar mitzvah ceremony when he was thirteen. His family was involved in the synagogue and had many Jewish friends. Of the Holocaust, he said that his parents "talked about it all the time, and so it was always on my mind". His father had lost between sixteen and twenty relatives in the Holocaust. Spielberg found it difficult accepting his heritage; he said: "It isn't something I enjoy admitting ... but when I was seven, eight, nine years old, God forgive me, I was embarrassed because we were Orthodox Jews. I was embarrassed by the outward perception of my parents' Jewish practices. I was never really ashamed to be Jewish, but I was uneasy at times." Spielberg was the target of antisemitism: "In high school, I got smacked and kicked around. Two bloody noses. It was horrible." He gradually followed Judaism less during adolescence, after his family had moved to various neighborhoods and found themselves to be the only Jews.

Spielberg recalls his parents taking him to see Cecil B. DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth (1952). He had never seen a movie before, and thought they were taking him to the circus. He was terrified by the movie's train crash, and at age 12, recreated it with his Lionel trains and filmed it. He recalls: "The trains went around and around, and after a while that got boring, and I had this eight-millimeter camera, and I staged a train wreck and filmed it. That was hard on the trains, but then I could cut the film lots of different ways and look at it over and over again." This was his first home movie. In 1958, he became a Boy Scout, attaining the rank of Eagle Scout at age 13. Spielberg used his father's movie camera to make amateur features, and took it along on every Scout trip. He fulfilled a requirement for the photography merit badge by making a nine-minute 8 mm Western, The Last Gunfight. At age 13, Spielberg made a 40-minute war film, Escape to Nowhere, with a cast of classmates. It won first prize in a statewide competition. Spielberg made about fifteen to twenty 8 mm adventure films. He recalls that

my dad told me stories about World War II constantly ... I knew, based on the stories my dad and his friends were telling about World War II, that there was no glory in war. And it was ugly, and it was cruel ... it was, you know, visually devastating. And so I thought, someday, if I ever do make a war movie for real, it's got to be something that tells the truth about what those experiences had been for those young 17-, 18-, 19-year-old boys storming Omaha Beach, let's say.

Spielberg went to the local theater every Saturday. Formative films included Victor Fleming's Captains Courageous (1937), Disney's Pinocchio and Fantasia (both 1940), Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon (1950) and The Seven Samurai (1954), Ishirō Honda's Godzilla, King of the Monsters! (1956), David Lean's Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) and Lawrence of Arabia (1962) ("the film that set me on my journey"), Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (1963) and Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove (1964) and 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) ("I'm still living off the adrenalin that ... I experienced watching that film for the first time.") He attended Arcadia High School for three years. He wrote and directed a science fiction film, Firelight, funded mainly by his father. It was shown in a local theater for one evening and grossed $501 against its $500 budget.

After taking a tour bus to Universal Studios, a chance conversation with an executive led to Spielberg getting a three-day pass to the premises. On the fourth day, he walked up to the studio gates without a pass, and the security guard waved him in: "I basically spent the next two months at Universal Studios ... that was how I became an unofficial apprentice that summer." His family later moved to Saratoga, California, where he attended Saratoga High School. A year later, his parents divorced. Spielberg moved to Los Angeles to stay with his father, while his three sisters and mother remained in Saratoga. He recalls his mother had "a huge adventurous personality. We always saw her as Peter Pan, the kid who never wanted to grow up, and she sort of saw herself that way. I think my mom lived a lot of childhoods in her ninety-seven years." He was not interested in academics, aspiring only to be a filmmaker. He applied to the University of Southern California's film school but was turned down because of his mediocre grades. He then applied and enrolled at California State University, Long Beach, where he became a brother of Theta Chi fraternity. In 1968, Universal gave Spielberg the opportunity to write and direct a short film for theatrical release, the 26-minute 35 mm Amblin'. Studio vice president Sidney Sheinberg was impressed and offered Spielberg a seven-year directing contract. A year later, he dropped out of college to begin directing television productions for Universal, making him the youngest director to be signed to a long-term plan with a major Hollywood studio.

He recalls a formative encounter with one of his favorite filmmakers, John Ford, who said: "So they tell me you want to be a picture maker. You see those paintings around the office?" Spielberg said he did. Ford pointed to a painting and asked, "Where's the horizon?" Spielberg said it was at the top. Ford asked him where it was in another painting. Spielberg said it was at the bottom. Ford said, "When you're able to distinguish the art of the horizon at the bottom of a frame or at the top of the frame, but not going right through the center of the frame, when you can appreciate why it's at the top and why it's at the bottom, you might make a pretty good picture maker."

Career

1969–1974: On the horizon

Spielberg's professional debut was "Eyes" (1969), a Night Gallery segment scripted by Rod Serling and starring Joan Crawford. Initially, there was skepticism from Crawford and studio executives regarding Spielberg's inexperience. His initial contributions received mixed responses, leading Spielberg to briefly step back from studio work. Crawford, reflecting on her collaboration with Spielberg, recognized his potential, noting his unique intuitive inspiration. She expressed her appreciation for Spielberg's talent in a note to him and communicated her approval to Serling. Crawford's endorsement highlighted Spielberg's early recognition in Hollywood despite hesitations regarding his experience. He was hired to do the segment "Make Me Laugh". He recalled "I came on the set, and because it was only 11 minutes long I had this idea of shooting the whole 11 minutes in one shot. [...] But I staged the whole thing across four sets in one shot. Storyboarded it, rehearsed it, everybody was excited about it, and then when the executives sat down to watch the rushes the next day they saw the entire 10-minute take of most of the show. And they were appalled."

In the early 1970s, Spielberg unsuccessfully tried to raise financing for his own low-budget films. He co-wrote and directed teleplays for Marcus Welby, M.D., The Name of the Game, Columbo, Owen Marshall, Counselor at Law and The Psychiatrist. The Columbo episode directed was the show's inaugural, non-pilot episode, "Murder by the Book". Although unsatisfied with his work, Spielberg used the opportunity to hone his craft. He earned good reviews and impressed producers; he was earning a steady income and relocated to Laurel Canyon, LA.

Spielberg's directorial debut was Duel (1971), adapted from Richard Matheson's short story about a salesman (Dennis Weaver) being chased down a highway by a psychotic tanker truck driver. Executives decided to promote the film on television. Reviews were positive, and Universal asked Spielberg to shoot more scenes so it could be released theatrically. "Deservedly so" writes David Thomson, "for it stands up as one of the medium's most compelling spirals of suspense. The ordinariness of the Dennis Weaver character and the monstrous malignance of the truck confront one another with a narrative assurance that never needs to remind us of the element of fable." Spielberg described it as "Godzilla vs. Bambi". Duel aired on Barry Diller's ABC Movie of the Week before its theatrical release. More TV films followed: Something Evil (1972), which aired on CBS, and Savage (1973), which aired on NBC.

Spielberg made his theatrical debut with The Sugarland Express (1974), based on a true story of a married couple (Goldie Hawn and William Atherton) on the run, desperate to regain custody of their baby from foster parents. The film marked the first of many collaborations with composer John Williams. It was awarded Best Screenplay at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival but was not a commercial success, which Spielberg blamed on Universal's inconsistent marketing. Pauline Kael wrote "Spielberg uses his gifts in a very free-and-easy, American way—for humor, and for a physical response to action. He could be that rarity among directors, a born entertainer—perhaps a new generation's Howard Hawks." The Hollywood Reporter wrote that "a major new director is on the horizon".

1975–1980: Magician

Poster for Jaws

Producers Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown took a chance by giving Spielberg the opportunity to direct Jaws (1975), a thriller based on Peter Benchley's bestseller. In it, a great white shark attacks beachgoers at a resort town, prompting police chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) to hunt it with the help of a marine biologist (Richard Dreyfuss) and a veteran shark hunter (Robert Shaw). Jaws was the first film shot on open ocean, so shooting proved difficult, especially when the mechanical shark malfunctioned. The shooting schedule overran by a hundred days, and Universal threatened to cancel production. Against expectations, Jaws was a success, setting the domestic box-office record and making Spielberg a household name. It won Academy Awards for Best Film Editing (Verna Fields), Academy Award for Best Original Score (John Williams) and Best Sound (Robert Hoyt, Roger Heman, Earl Madery and John Carter). Spielberg said the malfunctioning mechanical shark resulted in a better movie, as he had to find other ways to suggest the villain's presence. Kael called it the "most cheerfully perverse scare movie ever made", adding "it’s funny in a Woody Allen way." She quoted Alfred Hitchcock as saying Spielberg thought outside the visual dynamics of the theater: "he’s the first one of us who doesn’t think in terms of the proscenium arch. With him, there’s nothing but the camera lens."

Like Coppola on The Godfather, Spielberg asserted his own role and deftly organized the elements into a roller coaster entertainment without sacrificing inner meanings. The suspense of the picture came from meticulous technique and good humor about its own surgical cutting. You have only to submit to the travesty of Jaws 2 to realize how much more engagingly Spielberg saw the ocean, the perils, the sinister beauty of the shark, and the vitality of its human opponents.

— Critic David Thompson

After declining an offer to make Jaws 2, Spielberg and Dreyfuss reunited to work on a film about UFOs, Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). Spielberg used 65 mm film for the best picture quality, and a new live-action recording system so recordings could be duplicated later. He cast one of his favorite directors, François Truffaut, as the scientist Claude Lacombe and worked with special effects expert Douglas Trumbull. It marked the first of many collaborations between Spielberg and editor Michael Kahn. One of the rare films both written and directed by Spielberg, Close Encounters won Academy Awards for Best Cinematography (Vilmos Zsigmond) and Best Sound Effects Editing (Frank Warner). Stanley Kauffmann wrote: "I saw Close Encounters at its first public showing in New York, and most of the audience stayed...to watch the credits crawl lengthily at the end. For one thing, under the credits the giant spaceship was returning to the stars. For another, they just didn't want to leave this picture. For still another, they seemed to understand the importance of those many names to what they had just seen." Kauffmann placed it first on his list of the best American films from 1968 to 1977. Kael called Spielberg "a magician in the age of movies".

His next directorial work was 1941 (1979), an action-comedy written by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale about Californians preparing for a Japanese invasion after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Spielberg was self-conscious about doing comedy as he had no prior experience in it. Universal and Columbia agreed to co-finance the film. 1941 grossed more than $92 million worldwide upon release, but most critics, and the studio heads, disliked it. Charles Champlin described 1941 as "the most conspicuous waste since the last major oil spill, which it somewhat resembles."

1981–1992: Impresario

Spielberg directed Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), with a screenplay by Lawrence Kasdan based on a story by George Lucas and Philip Kaufman. They considered it a homage to the serials of the 1930s and 40s. It starred Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones and Karen Allen as Marion Ravenwood. Filmed in La Rochelle, Hawaii, Tunisia and Elstree Studios, England, the shoot was difficult but Spielberg said it helped him hone his business acumen. The film was a box-office success and won Academy Awards for Best Art Direction (Norman Reynolds, Leslie Dilley and Michael D. Ford); Best Film Editing (Michael Kahn); Best Sound (Bill Varney, Steve Maslow, Gregg Landaker and Roy Charman); Best Sound Editing (Ben Burtt and Richard L. Anderson) and Best Visual Effects (Richard Edlund, Kit West, Bruce Nicholson and Joe Johnston). Roger Ebert wrote: "Raiders of the Lost Ark is an out-of-body experience, a movie of glorious imagination and breakneck speed that grabs you in the first shot, hurtles you through a series of incredible adventures, and deposits you back in reality two hours later–breathless, dizzy, wrung-out, and with a silly grin on your face". Raiders was the first film in the Indiana Jones franchise.

President Ronald Reagan and First Lady Nancy Reagan with Spielberg at The White House during a private dinner and showing of E.T. in 1982

Spielberg returned to science fiction with E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982). It tells the story of Elliot (Henry Thomas), a young boy who befriends an alien who was left behind by his companions and is trying to return home. Spielberg eschewed