Steven speilberg biography
Steven Spielberg
(1946-)
Who Is Steven Spielberg?
Steven Spielberg was an amateur filmmaker as a child. He went on to become the enormously successful and Academy Award-winning director of such films as Schindler's List, The Color Purple, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, Saving Private Ryan, Catch Me If You Can, Lincoln and Bridge of Spies. In 1994, he co-founded the studio Dreamworks SKG, which was purchased by Paramount Pictures in 2005.
Early Career
Spielberg was born on December 18, 1946, in Cincinnati, Ohio. Spielberg moved several times growing up and spent part of his youth in Arizona. He became one of the youngest television directors for Universal in the late 1960s. A highly praised television film, Duel (1972), brought him the opportunity to direct for the cinema, and a long string of hits have made him the most commercially successful director of all time.
'Jaws,' 'The Color Purple' and 'Schindler's List'
Spielberg's films have explored primeval fears, as in Jaws (1975), or expressed childlike wonder at the marvels of this world and beyond, as in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and E.T. (1982). He has also tackled literary adaptations, such as The Color Purple (1985) and Empire of the Sun (1987). And audiences around the world were riveted by the continuing adventures of his daredevil hero Indiana Jones in such films as Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984). Imaginative fantasy is dominant in Spielberg's Peter Pan-inspired Hook (1991), while Jurassic Park (1993) and its sequel The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) rely on traditional action and monster-horror sequences.
Spielberg is also known for his impressive historical films. The Holocaust drama Schindler's List (1993), starring Liam Neeson as a businessman who helps save Jewish citizens, won seven Academy Awards, including Spielberg’s first win as best director. In 1998, he revisited World War II, this American filmmaker (born 1946) "Spielberg" redirects here. For other uses, see Spielberg (disambiguation). Steven Allan Spielberg (; born December 18, 1946) is an American filmmaker. A major figure of the New Hollywood era and pioneer of the modern blockbuster, Spielberg is widely regarded as one of the greatest film directors of all time and is the most commercially successful director in film history. Among other accolades, he has received three Academy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards and two BAFTA Awards, as well as the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1995, the Knight Commander of the British Empire in 2001, the Kennedy Center Honor in 2006, the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2009 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015. Seven of his films have been inducted into the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant". Spielberg was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and grew up in Phoenix, Arizona. He moved to California and studied film in college. After directing several episodes for television, including Night Gallery and Columbo, he directed the television film Duel (1971). He made his theatrical debut with The Sugarland Express (1974) and became a household name with the summer blockbuster Jaws (1975). He directed more escapist box office successes with Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) and the original Indiana Jones trilogy (1981–1989). He explored drama in The Color Purple (1985) and Empire of the Sun (1987). In 1993, Spielberg directed the science fiction thriller Jurassic Park, the highest-grossing film ever at the time, and the Holocaust drama Schindler's List, which has often been listed as one of the greatest films ever made. He won the Academy Award for Best Director for the latter as well as for the World War II epic Saving Private Ryan (1998). Spielber Filmmaker Steven Spielberg is a man captivated by history. "I have a deep rooted fascination in the Second World War because my father fought in that war, and an interest in the Holocaust, because my parents spoke openly and freely about it. These were stories that were painful, yet compelling to me," he says. While his movies 1941 and the Indiana Jones trilogy take a spirited approach to World War II, the period is also the subject of Spielberg's more sobering films-Empire of the Sun, Schindler's List, and Saving Private Ryan. Born in 1946 in Ohio, Spielberg was raised in the suburbs of Haddonfield, New Jersey, and Scottsdale, Arizona. He started making amateur films while in his teens and later studied film at California State University, Long Beach. In 1969, his twenty-two-minute short Amblin was shown at the Atlanta Film Festival, which led to his becoming the youngest director ever to sign a long-term deal with a major Hollywood studio. Spielberg's subsequent directing credits read as a bibliography to American popular culture: Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Color Purple, Jurassic Park, and Amistad. In addition to founding Amblin Entertainment in 1984, Spielberg joined Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen to form the multi-media venture Dreamworks SKG in 1994. Spielberg is also the chairman of the Starbright Foundation, which brings together pediatric health care, technology, and the entertainment industry to improve the lives of seriously ill children. A hint of Spielberg's historical sensitivity appeared in 1987, with Empire of the Sun, a coming of age story set against the backdrop of Japan's occupation of China. With Schindler's List (1993), Spielberg told the story of the Holocaust through the eyes of Oskar Schindler, a wealthy German industrialist. Filmed in stark black-and-white, Schindler's List earned Spielberg his first best director and best picture Oscars. "At the time, I felt that I wasn' Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg: A Biography
The first half of the book is very good, because the author takes his time explaining family connections, his amateur films, etc. It is a little repetitive (how often does McBride feel he has to tell us that Spielberg felt like an outsider growing up?), but the detail and narrative flow are good, telling us a lot about the man behind the movies. Especially interesting is the information on Spielberg's TV work. Unfortunately, the second half of the book rapidly degenerates into a shallow overview of things we already know about Spielberg, and is very disappointing. It's almost like McBride had a page limit, and after spending so much time on S's childhood, he had to rush through the remaining material, save for sections on Schindler's List and Colour Purple (both deserving movies, of course). Even Jurassic Park is little more than a sideshow. Further, McBride weirdly denigrates Crichton's novel, but Peter Benchley's Jaws seems to avoid this fate - why attack Crichton's story and only his story, even if you feel Jaws the movie is superior to Jurassic Park (which I would agree with), Benchley's novel is not any more "literature" than Chrichton's (and no more real