STEVEN SPIELBERG

STEVEN SPIELBERG

Birth name - Steven Allan Spielberg

Born - December 18, 1946 (1946-12-18) (age 60)
Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S.

Years active 1968 - present

Spouse(s) - Amy Irving (1985-1989)
Kate Capshaw (1991-)

Children - Max Spielberg (b.1985)
Theo Spielberg (b.1988, adopted)
Sasha Spielberg (b.1990)
Sawyer Spielberg (b.1992)
Mikaela Spielberg (b.1996, adopted)
Destry Spielberg (b.1996)

Steven Allan Spielberg (born December 18, 1946) is an American film director and producer. Spielberg is a three-time Academy Award winner and is the highest grossing filmmaker of all time, his films having made nearly $8 billion internationally. Forbes Magazine places Spielberg's net worth at $3 billion. As of 2006, Premiere listed him as the most powerful and influential figure in the motion picture industry. TIME named him in the '100 Greatest People of the Century'. At the end of the 20th century LIFE named him the most influential person of his generation

In a career that spans almost four decades, Spielberg's films have touched many themes and genres. During the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, three of his films, Jaws, E.T. , and Jurassic Park became the highest grossing films for their time. During his early years as a director, his sci-fi and adventure films were often seen as the archetype of modern Hollywood blockbuster film-making. In recent years, he has tackled emotionally powerful issues such as the Holocaust, slavery, war, and terrorism.

Early life

Spielberg was born in Cincinnati, Ohio to Arnold and Leahanni Spielberg, and has three younger sisters. His surname comes from the name of the Austrian city Spielberg, where his Hungarian Jewish ancestors lived in the 17th century. Spielberg's family often moved because of his father's occupation as a computer engineer; he lived in Camden, New Jersey, Montclair, New Jersey, Haddon Township, New Jersey, Phoenix, Arizona and Saratoga, California. The first film Spielberg saw was Cecil B. DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth.

Throughout his early teens, Spielberg made amateur 8 mm "adventure" movies with his friends, the first of which he shot at a restaurant in Scottsdale, Arizona. He charged admission (25 Cents) to his home movies (which involved the wrecks he staged with his Lionel train set) while his sister sold popcorn. At 13, Spielberg won a prize for a 40-minute war movie he titled Escape to Nowhere. At Arcadia High School in Phoenix, Arizona in 1963, the then 16-year-old Spielberg wrote and directed his first independent movie, a 140-minute science fiction adventure called Firelight (which would later inspire Close Encounters). The movie, with a budget of USD$400, was shown in his local movie theater and generated a profit of $100. A writer for the local Phoenix press wrote that he could expect great things to come.

After his parents divorced, he moved to California with his father. His three sisters and mother remained in Arizona, where he attended Passover seders at the home of Zalman and Pearl Segal on an annual basis. He graduated from Saratoga High School in Saratoga, California, in 1965, which he called the "worst experience" of his life and "hell on Earth". During this time Spielberg became an Eagle Scout. After moving to California, he applied to attend film school at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television and University of Southern California's School of Cinema-Television three separate times but was unsuccessful due to his C grade average. After Spielberg became famous, USC awarded Spielberg an honorary degree in 1994, and in 1996 he became a trustee of the University. He attended California State University, Long Beach, to avoid the draft for the Vietnam War. His actual career began when he returned to Universal studios as an unpaid, three-day-a-week intern and guest of the editing department. While attending college at Long Beach State in the 1960s, Spielberg also became member of Theta Chi Fraternity. In 2002, thirty-five years after starting college, Spielberg finished his degree via independent projects at CSULB, and was awarded a B.A. in Film Production and Electronic Arts with an option in Film/Video Production.

As an intern and guest of Universal Studios, Spielberg made his first short film for theatrical release, the 24 minute long movie Amblin' in 1968. After Sidney Sheinberg, then the vice-president of production for Universal's TV arm saw the film, Spielberg became the youngest director ever to be signed to a long-term deal with a major Hollywood studio (Universal). He dropped out of Long Beach State in 1969 to take the television director contract at Universal Studios and began his career as a professional director.

Early career (1968–1975)

His first professional TV job came when he was hired to do one of the segments for the 1969 pilot episode of Night Gallery. The segment, Eyes, starred Joan Crawford (who was very supportive of her twenty-two year-old rookie director), and she and Spielberg were reportedly close friends until her death. The episode is unusual in his body of work, in that the camerawork is more highly stylized than his later, more "mature" films. After this, and an episode of Marcus Welby M.D., Spielberg got his first feature-length assignment: an episode of Name of the Game called "L.A. 2017". This futuristic science fiction episode impressed Universal Studios and they signed him on a short contract. He did another segment on Night Gallery and did some work for shows such as Owen Marshall, Counselor at Law and The Psychiatrist before landing the first series episode of Columbo (previous "episodes" were actually TV movies).

Based on the strength of his work, Universal signed Spielberg to do three TV movies. The first was a Richard Matheson adaptation called Duel about a monstrous tanker truck who tries to run a small car off the road. Special praise of this film by the influential British critic Dilys Powell was highly significant to Spielberg's career. Another TV film was made and released to capitalize on the popularity of The Exorcist, then a major best-selling book which had not yet been released as a movie. He fulfilled his contract by directing the TV movie length pilot of a show called Savage, starring Martin Landau. Spielberg's debut theatrical feature film was The Sugarland Express, about a married couple who are chased by police as the couple tries to regain custody of their baby. Spielberg's cinematography for the police chase was praised by reviewers, and The Hollywood Reporter stated that "a major new director is on the horizon" However, the film fared poorly at the box office and received a limited release.

Jaws helped launch Spielberg's career as a successful Hollywood director

Studio producers Richard Zanuck and David Brown offered Spielberg the director's chair for Jaws, a horror film based on the Peter Benchley novel. The film about a killer shark won three Academy Awards (for editing, original score and sound), and grossed over USD$100 million at the box office, setting the domestic record for box office gross and leading to what the press described as "Jawsmania". Jaws made him a household name, as well as one of America's youngest multi-millionaires, and allowed Spielberg a great deal of autonomy for his future projects. It was nominated for Best Picture and featured Spielberg's first of three collaborations with actor Richard Dreyfuss.

Awards

Spielberg is a winner of three Academy Awards. He has been nominated for six Academy Awards for the category of Best Director, winning two of them (Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan), and seven of the films he directed were up for the Best Picture Oscar (Schindler's List won). In 1987 he was awarded The Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award for his work as a creative producer.

As a teenager, Spielberg was involved in the Boy Scouts of America, and was committed long enough to earn the highest honor of Eagle Scout. In 1989, Spielberg appeared at the National Scouting Jamboree, where he introduced a new merit badge called Cinematography. The merit badge has the movie slate for its appearance. Scouts earn the badge by doing amateur film work. That same year, 1989, was the release of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, whose opening scene had a teenage Indiana Jones being a member of a Boy Scout troop. Spielberg stated he made Indiana Jones a Boy Scout in honor of his experience in Scouting. For having the distinction of one of the few men to introduce a new merit badge to Scouting, Spielberg was awarded the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award He was a member of the Executive Board of the BSA until he resigned because of his disapproval regarding the BSA's anti-homosexuality stance.

For his work on the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation since 1994, he was awarded with the Great Cross of Merit with Star, the German version of the Great Officer's Cross, in September 1998 for "a very noticeable contribution to the issue of the Holocaust".

Spielberg with a public service award from US Secretary of Defense William Cohen, 1999

In 1999, Spielberg received an honorary degree from Brown University. Spielberg was also awarded the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service by Secretary of Defense William Cohen at the Pentagon on August 11, . Cohen presented Spielberg the award in recognition of his movie Saving Private Ryan. The citation accompanying the medal states "Mr. Spielberg helped to reconnect the American public with its military men and women, while rekindling a deep sense of gratitude for the daily sacrifices they make on the front lines of our Nation's defense."

In 2001, he was given the honor of Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) by Queen Elizabeth II. However, he cannot use the title 'Sir' due to not being a Commonwealth citizen. On July 15, 2006, Spielberg was also awarded the Gold Hugo, Lifetime Achievement Award at the Chicago International Film Festival's Summer Gala, and also was awarded a Kennedy Center honour on December 3. The tribute to Spielberg featured a short filmed biography narrated by Tom Hanks and included thank-yous from World War II veterans for Saving Private Ryan, as well as a performance of the finale to Leonard Bernstein's Candide, conducted by John Williams (Spielberg's frequent composer).

1960s

1. Firelight (1964)
2. Amblin' (1968)

1970s

Directed

1. Duel (1971)
2. The Sugarland Express (1974)
3. Jaws (1975)
4. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
5. 1941 (1979)

Produced

1. I Wanna Hold Your Hand(1978)

1980s

Directed

1. Raiders of the Lost Ark(1981)
2. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
3. Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983) (second segment)
4. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)
5. The Color Purple(1985)
6. Empire of the Sun (1987)
7. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade(1989)
8. Always(1989)

Produced

1. Used Cars (1980)
2. Poltergeist (1982)
3. Gremlins(1984)
4. Back to the Future(1985)
5. The Goonies (1985)
6. Young Sherlock Holmes (1985)
7. The Money Pit(1986)
8. An American Tail(1986)
9. The Land Before Time(1988)
10. Back to the Future II (1989)

Acted

1. The Blues Brothers (1980)

1990s

Directed

1. Hook (1991)
2. Jurassic Park (1993)
3. Schindler's List (1993)
4. The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)
5. Amistad (1997)
6. Saving Private Ryan(1998)

Produced

1. Back to the Future III(1990)
2. Gremlins 2: The New Batch(1990)
3. The Flintstones(1994)
4. Men in Black(1997)
5. Deep Impact (1998)
6. The Mask of Zorro(1998)

2000s

Directed

1. Artificial Intelligence: A.I. (2001)
2. Minority Report(2002)
3. Catch Me if You Can(2002)
4. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial: 20th Anniversary Edition(2002) (edited re-release in 2002)
5. The Terminal(2004)
6. War of the Worlds (2005)
7. Munich (2005)
8. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)

Produced

1. Jurassic Park III(2001)
2. Shrek (uncredited) (2001)
3. Men in Black II(2002)
4. The Legend of Zorro (2005)
5. Memoirs of a Geisha (2005)
6. Monster House (2006)
7. Flags of Our Fathers(2006)
8. Letters from Iwo Jima(2006)
9. Disturbia (Uncredited) (2007)
10. Transformers (2007)