Steven Spielberg American Director From Cincinnati

Early life

Steven Allan Spielberg was born on December 18, 1946, in Cincinnati, Ohio, the eldest of four children and the only son. His mother, Leah Adler, was a concert pianist who also ran a restaurant, and his father, Arnold, was an electrical engineer who worked on early computers. The family moved to New Jersey in 1952 and to Phoenix, Arizona, in 1957.

He began making films as a boy. At twelve he staged a train wreck with a toy set and filmed it, and by thirteen he had made a forty-minute war picture, Escape to Nowhere, with classmates, which won a statewide prize. He attended Arcadia High School in Arizona and Saratoga High School in California. The University of Southern California turned down his application to its film school, so he enrolled at California State University, Long Beach. In 1968 Universal Studios let him direct a short film, Amblin', and the studio offered him a seven-year contract, which led him to leave college and direct for television. He returned to Long Beach years later and completed his degree in 2002.

Career

His first television work included an episode of Night Gallery in 1969 and the first regular episode of Columbo. His first full-length film was the television thriller Duel (1971), which was extended for a theatrical release abroad. The Sugarland Express (1974) was his theatrical debut and began a long partnership with the composer John Williams. Jaws (1975) set a domestic box-office record and made him widely known. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) followed, and he wrote its screenplay himself.

During the 1980s he directed Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989). He also turned to drama with The Color Purple (1985) and Empire of the Sun (1987). As a producer he worked on films such as Poltergeist, Gremlins and Back to the Future.

In 1993 he released two films within months of each other. Jurassic Park became the highest-grossing film made to that date, and Schindler's List, shot in Kraków, won seven Academy Awards. With its profits he established the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, now the USC Shoah Foundation, which recorded testimony from more than 50,000 survivors. In 1994 he founded DreamWorks with Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen. He continued with The Lost World: Jurassic Park and Amistad in 1997 and Saving Private Ryan in 1998.

His work in the 2000s included A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), a project Stanley Kubrick had developed, and Minority Report and Catch Me If You Can in 2002. The Terminal followed in 2004, then War of the Worlds and Munich in 2005. DreamWorks was sold to Viacom in December 2005. He returned to the adventure series with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) and directed the motion-capture film The Adventures of Tintin (2011), War Horse (2011) and Lincoln (2012).

Later films include Bridge of Spies (2015), The BFG (2016), The Post (2017), Ready Player One (2018), West Side Story (2021) and The Fabelmans (2022), a family drama. His science-fiction film Disclosure Day is listed for 2026. He co-founded Amblin Entertainment and has also acted as producer on television series, including Band of Brothers.

Recognition

Spielberg has won three Academy Awards: Best Director and Best Picture for Schindler's List, and Best Director again for Saving Private Ryan. He received the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award in 1987. Other honors include the Golden Lion for lifetime achievement at Venice in 1993, an honorary knighthood in 2001, the Kennedy Center Honors in 2006, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015 and the National Medal of Arts in 2023. In 2023 he also received a Golden Bear in Berlin and a Golden Globe for directing The Fabelmans. He is among the few people to have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Academy Award and a Tony Award.

Public roles

Spielberg served as president of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival. Through the Shoah Foundation he has supported the documentation of Holocaust survivors' accounts.

Personal life

Spielberg married the actress Amy Irving in 1985, and the marriage ended in 1989. He married the actress Kate Capshaw in 1991, after meeting her during work on Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. He has six children, including Sawyer, Destry and Sasha.