Spielberg, Steven

Spielberg, Steven (1946- ), American motion-picture director, producer, and executive, who achieved great commercial success and is among the most popular filmmakers of the late 20th century.
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. His 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 (1975), a thriller based on American author Peter Benchley's novel about a great white shark. 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.
After this, with only a few exceptions, every motion picture Spielberg handled became a box-office success, and he was increasingly regarded as a filmmaker of genuine artistic ability as well. Subsequent films included the science-fiction epic Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977; recut special edition, 1980); an unsuccessful historical farce, 1941 (1979); the action-adventure film Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and its sequels, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), on which he teamed with George Lucas as producer; the science-fiction fantasy E.T.—the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), often cited as his greatest artistic achievement, and at the time the highest-grossing film ever made; The Color Purple (1985; also coproducer), a drama based on the novel by American author Alice Walker; Empire of the Sun (1987; also coproducer), based on J. G. Ballard's autobiographical novel 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 popular sequel to the classic story of Peter Pan.
In 1993 Spielberg released two films that had tremendous commercial and artistic 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 black-and-white epic of the Holocaust, proved Spielberg a director of great power and sensitivity. The film achieved widespread critical praise and won two Academy Awards—for best director and best picture—and numerous other prizes. This 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. Spielberg won his second Academy Award for best director in 1999, for Saving Private Ryan.

In the late 1970s Spielberg had begun to involve himself in production and even in scriptwriting. By 1984, having already coproduced and executive-produced feature films (including Poltergeist,1982), he established his own independent production unit, Amblin Entertainment. Under its aegis he produced (as coexecutive producer) 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). 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), all produced by Spielberg, reflect his passionate interest in this medium. Spielberg also continued to be active in television in 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.