Steven Allan Spielberg was born December 18, 1946. He is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer and studio entrepreneur.
Speilberg has been a part of the film industry for over four decades and his films have covered many themes and genres. His early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as a form of modern Hollywood blockbuster filmmaking. In the later years, his films began addressing issues such as war, terrorism and slavery.
He is considered to be one of the most influential and popular filmmakers in the history of cinema. He is also one of the co-founders of Dreamworks studio which develops, produces, and distributes films, video games and television programming. It has produced or distributed more than ten films with box-office grosses totaling more than $100 million each.
Steven Speilberg has won the Academy Award for Best Director for Shindler’s List and Savind Private Ryan. Three of his other films, Jaws, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Jurassic Park achieved box office records, each becoming the highest-grossing film made at that time.
LIFE
Steven Allan Spielberg was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, to a Jewish family. His mother Leah Adler was a restaurateur and concert pianist and his father, Arnold Spielberg, was an electrical engineer involved in the development of computers.
Throughout his teens, Spielberg made amateur 8mm “adventure” films with his friends. He charged an admission fee of 25 cents to his home films while his sister sold popcorn. At age 16, Spielberg wrote and directed his first independent film, a 140-minute science fiction adventure called Firelight which would later inspire ‘Close Encounters’.
His first professional TV job came when he was hired to do one of the segments for the pilot episode of ‘Night Gallery’. Post this project and a few others he was signed by Universal Studios based on the strength of his work, to do four TV films. After completion of these four TV films, came the offer to direct Jaws.
Speilberg was offered the directors chair for this film – a thriller-horror film about an enormous killer shark. The film suffered delays and budget over-runs and was nearly shut down, but Speilberg persevered and managed to finish the film. Jaw was an enormous success at the box office, and even went on to win three Academy Awards. The movie was so popular that it led to the press describing it as “Jawsmania”. The film made Speilberg a household name, and gave him a great deal of freedom for future projects.
Speilberg then went on to make several films, with many being successful such as Close Encounters of the Third Kind which was a critical box office hit, Star Wars, E.T., Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park and Shindlers List. All these movies fared extremely well and even won a number of awards.
Other movies such as Catch Me If You Can, Munich, Warhorse, Black Hawk Down and Enemy At The Gates have all achieved critical acclaim and have been huge successes at the Box-Office. He is also the director to the multi-award winning TV mini-series, the Band of Brothers.
Apart from his work in film and television, Steven Spielberg co-founded and works closely with ‘Starbright’ – a foundation dedicated to improving children’s lives through technology-based programs focusing on education and entertainment.
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