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Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg, born in 1946, American motion-picture director, producer, and executive, whose movies feature thrilling action, special-effects wizardry, and memorable stories while also reflecting on larger themes and social issues. Spielberg films such as Jaws (1975), E.T.—The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Jurassic Park (1993), and Schindler's List (1993) made a huge commercial and cultural impact and earned recognition for their craftsmanship and emotional power.
Spielberg was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and educated at California State College at Long Beach (now California State University at Long Beach). He began making movies at the age of 12, and by the time he left college he had at least eight amateur works to his credit. Spielberg's short film Amblin' (1969) came to the attention of Universal Pictures, which signed him to a seven-year contract.
Spielberg's earliest commercial efforts were television movies, among them Duel (1971), a suspense film that brought him wider recognition. Sugarland Express (1974), Spielberg's first theatrical feature film, was an expertly crafted variant on the road picture. It was soon followed by Jaws, a thriller based on American author Peter Benchley's novel about a great white shark that terrorizes a beach community. Jaws proved a tremendous success and quickly established Spielberg's reputation and fame, also heralding a new era of blockbuster films with large gross revenues. Other Spielberg films of the 1970s included the science fiction epic Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and an unsuccessful historical farce, 1941 (1979).
In the 1980s Spielberg and director-producer George Lucas teamed to make the action-adventure Indiana Jones film series: Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989). Other projects for Spielberg during this period included the science fiction fantasy E.T.—The Extra-Terrestrial, at the time the highest-grossing film ever made; The Color Purple (1985), a drama based on the novel by American author Alice Walker; Empire of the Sun (1987), based on J. G. Ballard's autobiographical novel by J. G. Ballard about a young boy's struggle to survive in Japanese-occupied Shanghai at the beginning of World War II (1939-1945); Always (1989), a romantic fantasy; and Hook (1991), a film based on the classic story of Peter Pan.
In 1993 Spielberg released two very different films that had tremendous impact. Jurassic Park, featuring spectacular computer-created dinosaurs, became within four weeks of its release the top-grossing motion picture up to that time. Later that year Schindler's List, a powerful black-and-white epic about the Holocaust, finally brought Spielberg widespread recognition as a serious and brilliant director. The film earned critical acclaim and won Academy Awards for best director and best picture. It was Spielberg's first Academy Award for best director, although the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences had honored him with the Irving Thalberg Award in 1987. He won his second Academy Award for best director with Saving Private Ryan (1998), a searing drama about World War II.
Spielberg followed these successes with two science fiction films, Artificial Intelligence: AI (2001) and Minority Report (2002); Catch Me If You Can (2002), based on the true story of a charming young con artist; and The Terminal (2004), about a man who is stranded in an American airport because of a political coup in his home country.
In the late 1970s Spielberg began to get involved with production and screenwriting. By 1984, having already coproduced and executive-produced a number of feature films (including Poltergeist, 1982), he established his own independent production unit called Amblin Entertainment. Under this company he produced such films as Gremlins (1984), Back to the Future (1985), Young Sherlock Holmes (1985), *batteries not included (1987), Back to the Future II (1989), Arachnophobia (1990), Cape Fear (1991), and The Flintstones (1994). He also produced the animated features An American Tail (1986), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), An American Tail: Fievel Goes West (1991), and We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story (1993). Spielberg continued to be active in television during the 1980s and 1990s, producing several animated series; the anthology series Amazing Stories (1985-1987); and The Young Indiana Jones (1992-1994), a spin-off of his popular adventure films.
In 1994, along with powerful Hollywood figures Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen, Spielberg started a new movie studio, DreamWorks SKG. The studio released a number of box office successes, including Shrek (2001), a digitally animated movie about a lovable ogre that won the first Academy Award in the animated feature category.
Steven Spielberg
The imaginative films of Steven Spielberg are known for their technical creativity and memorable characters. Spielberg's movies include Jaws (1975), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), E.T.—The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Schindler's List (1993), Saving Private Ryan (1998), and The Terminal (2004).
THE BETTMANN ARCHIVE/UPI
