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[h3]Steven Allan Spielberg was born to parents Arnold and Leahanni Spielberg. The older brother to three younger sisters, Spielberg began experimenting with film in his early teens making movies he would show at his family house. [/h3]

At 13, Spielberg was already showing glimpses of future greatness, even winning a prize for his 40-minute war film Escape to Nowhere.

The family often moved with his father’s job and it was at Arcadia High School in Phoenix, Arizona that he produced his first feature-length film, Firelight, a science fiction movie with a budget of $400. Foreshadowing his future success, the film turned a tidy $100 profit after it was shown at a local theatre.

After his parents divorced, Spielberg moved to California with his father. He repeatedly applied to the UCLA School of Theatre, Film and Television and the University of Southern California's School of Cinema and Television but failed to gain entry. He attended California State University, Long Beach and got his first job in the film industry as an unpaid intern in the editing department of Universal Studios.

The job at Universal came almost by accident as he jumped from a tour bus and ventured inside one of the buildings on the studio grounds. His enthusiasm made such an impression on one of the workers, they gave him a pass to come back and watch directors at work. Spielberg made a point of being friendly with the security guards on the lot and on the fourth day he just waved rather than displaying his pass.

Every day for a summer, he returned to the set, found himself an office and just moved in.

“Everybody assumed I was related to someone working on the lot, or to an executive, and no-one really threw me off the set," he explained.

It was during this time he made his first professional release: a 24-minute film called Amblin. The film, about a boy and girl who meet hitch-hiking to a beach, would later lend its title to Spielberg’s production company. Executives at Universal were so impressed they signed Spielberg as a television director. He dropped out of college to take the job in 1969 and did not finish his degree until 33 years later in 2002.

Spielberg’s first forays into professional directing came in television working on shows such as Night Gallery, Name of the Game, Marcus Welby M.D., Owen Marshall, and Columbo. His first movie was a made-for-TV film called Duel about a giant truck that menaced a man driving a smaller car through desert roads that would become a recurring site in his later works. Spielberg claims to enjoy the theme of menacing, saying it appeals to the primal fears of the audience.

Spielberg’s debut into full-length theatrical releases came with 1974’s Sugarland Express with a young [urlnew=http://www.thebiographychannel.co.uk/biography_home/516:0/Goldie_Hawn.htm]Goldie Hawn[/urlnew]. Though the film did poorly at the box office, Spielberg was marked by critics and industry executives as a potential star.
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The film that set the Spielberg juggernaut in action was the 1975 hit Jaws. The horror film about a giant killer shark with its iconic atmospheric music won three Academy Awards for editing, original score, and sound, and was nominated for Best Picture losing out to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Jaws set box office records grossing over US$100 million and made Spielberg a millionaire in his early 30s.

His next film, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, cemented Spielberg’s rise. The science fiction film starring Jaws actor [urlnew=http://www.thebiographychannel.co.uk/biography_home/378:0/Richard_Dreyfuss.htm]Richard Dreyfuss[/urlnew] was written and directed by Spielberg and garnered six Academy Award nominations, including Best Director. It won two awards for Cinematography and a Special Achievement Award for Sound Effects Editing.

The war farce 1941 had the distinction of being Spielberg’s first flop, with critics and audiences alike but this was quickly followed by a string of action-adventure blockbusters in the early 1980s. The adventure movie Raiders of the Lost Ark with friend and Star Wars creator [urlnew=http://www.thebiographychannel.co.uk/biography_home/12:0/George_Lucas.htm]George Lucas[/urlnew] was the biggest movie of 1981 and gained Spielberg his second Best Director nomination.

In 1983, Spielberg released E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. The film about a small boy befriending and saving an alien became the highest-grossing film in history and was nominated for nine Academy Awards. A second Indiana Jones film, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was followed by Poltergeist, The Twilight Zone, and The Goonies, all recording impressive returns at the box office.

Two years later, Spielberg made his first foray into drama with The Colour Purple (1985). The film, about a group of Depression-era African-American women, was a massive hit with critics and crowds and earned 11 Oscar nominations. It seemed Spielberg could do no wrong.

His next film Empire of the Sun, a drama about an English boy separated from his parents in war-torn China, received critical acclaim but did not fare so well at the box office.

The Indiana Jones franchise was revived in 1989 with Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, this time adding [urlnew=http://www.thebiographychannel.co.uk/biography_home/589:0/Sean_Connery.htm]Sean Connery[/urlnew] to the mix as Jones senior alongside [urlnew=http://www.thebiographychannel.co.uk/biography_home/62:0/Harrison_Ford.htm]Harrison Ford[/urlnew].

Changing tack again, Spielberg then made the romantic drama Always which crashed at the box office and was panned by critics. Returning to adventure in 1991, Spielberg made Hook, based on the story of Peter Pan and starring [url=http://www.thebiographychannel.co.uk/biography_home/83:0/Robin_Williams.htm]Robin Williams[/url] as a grown up Pan brought back to Neverland. Teaming up again with Lucas, Spielberg then made Jurassic Park. The film, about a lost island of cloned, killer dinosaurs, would go on to become the highest grossing film of all-time, overtaking Spielberg’s previous record set with E.T.

Despite dominating Hollywood for over 15 years, Spielberg did not receive his first Best Director Academy Award until 1993’s Schindler’s List. Starring Liam Neeson, the film told the story of Oskar Schindler, a German industrialist who helped over 1000 Jews escape death during the Holocaust. Though a box office and critical smash, Spielberg did not receive payment for the film, instead preferring his profit to go to setting up the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation which chronicles and stores the testimony of Holocaust survivors.
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Spielberg took a break from directing in the mid-1990s to set up his own film studio DreamWorks. He returned in 1997 with the sequel to Jurassic Park: The Lost World and then Amistad, a movie about a rebellion on a slave ship.

DreamWorks’ first hit was the Spielberg-directed World War Two film Saving Private Ryan, which was about a group of soldiers trying to find their missing comrade in war-torn France. Saving Private Ryan was followed in 2001 by A.I., a sci-fi film started but left uncompleted by legendary director Stanley Kubrick after he died. Another science fiction film followed with 2002’s Minority Report based on a Philip K Dick novel and starring Tom Cruise.

The blockbusters kept rolling on with Catch Me If You Can in 2002, and The Terminal in 2004. Another sci-fi film saw Spielberg again collaborating with George Lucas and [urlnew=http://www.thebiographychannel.co.uk/biography_home/824:0/Tom_Cruise.htm]Tom Cruise[/urlnew] in War of the Worlds in 2005.

Spielberg returned to drama and made his second “Jewish’’ film in 2005 with Munich, which told the story of a team of Israeli intelligence operatives exacting revenge after the attack on Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

Complementing a long and distinguished career as a director Spielberg has also produced many films and TV shows. He produced the TV Show ER for a time and also helmed SeaQuest DSV. He was the producer on the cartoons Tiny Toon Adventures, Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain, Toonsylvania and Freakazoid!.

Movies he has produced include Back To The Future, An American Tail, Mask of Zorro, Men In Black, Deep Impact, Memoirs of a Geisha, and [urlnew=http://www.thebiographychannel.co.uk/biography_home/53:0/Clint_Eastwood.htm]Clint Eastwood’s[/urlnew] Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima. He executive produced The Haunting, Shrek, Monster House, Evolution, and Disturbia.

Spielberg’s films have often been criticised for staying too close to the mainstream but his knack for story-telling and his ability to produce crowd-pleasers is unequalled in movie history. His films normally pack in adventure, emotion, mystery, and scale as encapsulated in his quote about his film making process: "Before I go off and direct a movie, I always look at four films. They tend to be The Seven Samurai, Lawrence Of Arabia, It's A Wonderful Life and The Searchers".

In 1985, Spielberg married actress Amy Irving and the couple had a son, Max. The couple divorced in 1989 and Spielberg married actress Kate Capshaw who was in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. They have four children: Theo, Sasha, Sawyer and Destry - Capshaw has a daughter, Jessica, from a previous marriage. They also have two adopted children, Mikaela and Theo, and Spielberg’s god-daughter Janet also lives with them.

Spielberg is a supporter of the Democratic Party and has donated significantly funds to the party. He endorsed Republican senator [urlnew=http://www.thebiographychannel.co.uk/biography_home/828:0/Arnold_Schwarzenegger.htm]Arnold Schwarzenegger[/urlnew] for re-election as Governor of California and in 2007, he backed Hilary Rodham Clinton for President.
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2006 saw Spielberg named as the most powerful person in movies by film magazine Premiere. Time magazine listed him in its 100 Greatest People of the Century and Life magazine named him the most influential person of his generation. He has won three Academy Awards and in 2001, he was made a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire. His fortune is estimated to be in excess of US $3 billion.

Spielberg is known for buying historical film artifacts and donating them to the Academy and supporting Jewish organisations, particularly Holocaust survivor groups.

In 2002 Steven Spielberg returned to California State University Long Beach and finished the degree he started 35 years earlier. He gained a B.A. in Film Production and Electronic Arts with an option in Film/Video Production.

[i]Sam Carpenter[/i]
Steven Spielberg biography



- Spielberg jumped off a bus tour through Universal Studios and ran into a building on the lot. A worker overheard a conversation with a relative telling him how he really wanted to be a director and gave him a pass to come back the next day. After four days studio workers assumed Spielberg was an employee and let him stay until he could secure a real job.

- The noise you hear as the truck in `Duel’ goes over the edge of the cliff is a bootlegged copy of the sound of Godzilla, one of the films which scared Spielberg most.

- The mechanical shark in Jaws was nicknamed Bruce. Spielberg credits the mechanical breakdown of the shark to Jaws’ success in frightening the audience. He said he would have used it more blatantly and liberally had it actually worked throughout filming. Instead he uses innuendo and relies on the audience’s imagination in many scenes.
Steven Spielberg biography



[b]Director:[/b]

Munich (2005)

War of the Worlds (2005)

The Terminal (2004)

Catch Me If You Can (2002)

Minority Report (2002)

Artificial Intelligence: AI (2001)

The Unfinished Journey (1999)

Saving Private Ryan (1998)

Amistad (1997)

The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)

Steven Spielberg's Director's Chair (1996) (VG)

Schindler's List (1993)

Jurassic Park (1993)

Hook (1991)

Always (1989)

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)

Empire of the Sun (1987)

The Color Purple (1985)

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)

Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983) (segment 2)

E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

1941 (1979)

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

Jaws (1975)

The Sugarland Express (1974)

Savage (1973) (TV)

Something Evil (1972) (TV)

Duel (1971) (TV)

Columbo: Murder by the Book (1971) (TV)

The Psychiatrist (2 episodes, 1971)

The Name of the Game (1 episode, 1971)

Night Gallery (1 episode, 1971)

Marcus Welby, M.D.(1 episode, 1970)

Amblin' (1968)

Firelight (1964)

Escape to Nowhere (1961)

Fighter Squad (1961)

The Last Gun (1959)

[b]Producer:[/b]

Transformers (2007)

Letters from Iwo Jima (2006) (producer)

Flags of Our Fathers (2006) (producer)

Spell Your Name (2006) (executive producer)

Monster House (2006) (executive producer)

Munich (2005) (producer)

Memoirs of a Geisha (2005) (producer)

The Legend of Zorro (2005) (executive producer)

Into the West" (2005) (mini) TV Series (executive producer)

The Terminal (2004) (producer)

Voices from the List (2004) (V) (executive producer)

Burma Bridge Busters (2003) (TV) (executive producer)

Catch Me If You Can (2002) (producer)

Taken" (2002) TV Series (executive producer) (unknown episodes)

Men in Black II (2002) (executive producer)

Price for Peace (2002) (executive producer)

Broken Silence" (2002) (mini) TV Series (executive producer)

We Stand Alone Together (2001) (TV) (executive producer)

Band of Brothers" (2001) (mini) TV Series (executive producer)

Jurassic Park III (2001) (executive producer)

Artificial Intelligence: AI (2001) (producer)

Evolution (2001) (executive producer) (uncredited)

Shrek (2001) (executive producer) (uncredited)

Semper Fi (2001) (TV) (executive producer)

Shooting War (2000) (TV) (executive producer)

The Haunting (1999) (executive producer) (uncredited)

The Last Days (1998) (executive producer)

Saving Private Ryan (1998) (producer)

The Mask of Zorro (1998) (executive producer)

Deep Impact (1998) (executive producer)

Toonsylvania" (1998) TV Series (executive producer) (unknown
episodes)

Amistad (1997) (producer)

Pinky and the Brain" (executive producer) (4 episodes, 1995-1997)

Men in Black (1997) (executive producer)

The Lost Children of Berlin (1997) (executive producer)

High Incident" (1996) TV Series (executive producer) (unknown
episodes, 1996-1997)

Twister (1996) (executive producer)

Survivors of the Holocaust (1996) (TV) (executive producer)

The Best of Roger Rabbit (1996) (V) (executive producer)

Balto (1995) (executive producer)

SeaQuest DSV" (executive producer) (44 episodes, 1993-1995)

Freakazoid!" (1995) TV Series (executive producer) (unknown
episodes)

Tiny Toon Adventures: Night Ghoulery (1995) (TV) (executive
producer)

Casper (1995) (executive producer)

A Pinky & the Brain Christmas Special (1995) (TV) (executive
producer)

ER" (1994) TV Series (executive producer) (unknown episodes,
1994)

The Flintstones (1994) (executive producer) (as Steven Spielrock)

I'm Mad (1994) (executive producer)

Tiny Toon Adventures: Spring Break Special (1994) (TV) (executive
producer)

Tiny Toons Spring Break (1994) (TV) (executive producer)

Yakko's World: An Animaniacs Singalong (1994) (V) (executive
producer)

Schindler's List (1993) (producer)

We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story (1993) (executive producer)

Animaniacs" (1993) TV Series (executive producer) (unknown
episodes)

Family Dog" (1993) TV Series (executive producer) (unknown
episodes)

It's a Wonderful Tiny Toons Christmas Special (1992) (TV)
(executive producer)

Tiny Toon Adventures: How I Spent My Vacation (1992) (V)
(executive producer)

The Plucky Duck Show" (1992) TV Series (executive producer)

An American Tail: Fievel Goes West (1991) (producer)

A Wish for Wings That Work (1991) (TV) (executive producer)

Arachnophobia (1990) (executive producer)

Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990) (executive producer)

Roller Coaster Rabbit (1990) (executive producer)

Back to the Future Part III (1990) (executive producer)

Dreams (1990) (executive producer: international version)

Joe Versus the Volcano (1990) (executive producer)

Always (1989) (producer)

Back to the Future Part II (1989) (executive producer)

Dad (1989) (executive producer)

Tummy Trouble (1989) (executive producer)

The Land Before Time (1988) (executive producer)

Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) (executive producer)

*batteries not included (1987) (executive producer)

Empire of the Sun (1987) (producer)

Innerspace (1987) (executive producer)

Amazing Stories (executive producer) (1 episode, 1987)

An American Tail (1986) (executive producer)

The Money Pit (1986) (executive producer)

The Color Purple (1985) (producer)

Young Sherlock Holmes (1985) (executive producer)

Back to the Future (1985) (executive producer)

The Goonies (1985) (executive producer)

Gremlins (1984) (executive producer)

Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983) (producer)

Poltergeist (1982) (producer)

E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) (producer)

Continental Divide (1981) (executive producer)

Used Cars (1980) (executive producer)

I Wanna Hold Your Hand (1978) (executive producer)
Steven Spielberg biography

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