Steven Allan Spielberg was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, to Leah Posner, a restaurateur and pianist, and Arnold Spielberg, an electrical engineer. The parents emigrated from Ukraine in the first decade of the 20th century. When the boy was four years old, the Spielbergs moved to New Jersey and then to Phoenix, Arizona, where Steven went to school.
As a child, Spielberg began making home “adventure” films. At the age of 13, he created a 40-minute war movie “Escape to Nowhere” starring his school friends. Already at 16, young Steven directed his first independent film, Fire of Passion, which later became the basis for Close Encounters. In 1963, it took $500 to create the film, which Spielberg returned to himself after showing the work in one evening at a local cinema.
The family moved again, this time to Saratoga, California. While Steven was in high school, his parents divorced. After graduation, he moved with his father to Los Angeles, dreaming of becoming a filmmaker. Spielberg was not accepted to the University of Southern California film school, but was enrolled at California State University. During his studies, Steven took an unpaid internship in the editing department of Universal Studios. In 1968, he was given the opportunity to make a short film, The Wandering Ones, based on his own script. The studio vice president was so impressed with the work that Spielberg was offered a seven-year contract. He became the youngest director with a long-term contract at a major Hollywood studio. Steven dropped out of school and began his professional career.
At first, Spielberg worked on TV series, including Colombo. After the success of the TV movie Duel, which was nominated for a Golden Globe, the director got the opportunity to work on feature films.
Steven Spielberg’s films have touched upon various themes of human life and have raised more than one generation of fans, making him the most commercially successful director of all time. Spielberg has more than forty films to his credit, including the thriller about a ruthless killer shark Jaws (three Oscars), the family fantasy film E.T. (two Golden Globes), the super-popular Indiana Jones adventure franchise with Harrison Ford, the adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s biographical novel Empire of the Sun with the then-young actor Christian Bale, and others. In the 90s and noughties, the director made his famous masterpieces: the exciting Jurassic Park (three Oscars), the historical drama Schindler’s List (seven Oscars), and the war film Saving Private Ryan (two Golden Globes). In 1994, Steven Spielberg founded the Dreamworks SKG studio with Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen.
In 2001, he directed the science fiction project started by Stanley Kubrick, A.I. (Artificial Intelligence). A year later, he released another science fiction film, Minority Report, with Tom Cruise, based on a story by the famous writer Philip K. Dick, and a biographical drama, Catch Me If You Can, with Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks. Then there were The Terminal, The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells and the historical drama Munich.
Spielberg also acted as a producer of about 120 films. In addition to his own films, he supported other directors with his work: “Robert Zemeckis’ Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Back to the Future, Martin Scorsese’s Cape Fear, Simon Wells’ Balto, Barry Sonnenfeld’s Men in Black, Clint Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima, Michael Bay’s Transformers and many others.
In 2011, Steven Spielberg made a cartoon based on the comics “The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, which won a Golden Globe. In the same year, a dramatic story of friendship between a human and an animal, War Horse, was released. The director’s next project was a biography of US President Abraham Lincoln starring Daniel Day-Lewis. The film received 12 nominations and won two Oscars. In 2015, Spielberg directed the historical drama Bridge of Spies.
In addition to three Oscars, Steven Spielberg has received many other awards. In 1986, he was awarded the Irving Thalberg Prize by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts, and in 1998, the German President himself presented him with the Federal Cross of Merit. The director has also received the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Civilian Service from Secretary of Defense William Cohen, the title of Honorary Commander of the Order of the British Empire from Queen Elizabeth II, and the Legion of Honor from French President Jacques Chirac. In 2015, it was announced that Spielberg was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama himself at the White House.
The director has been married twice. He has a son from his first marriage to Amy Irving and five children with his current wife Kate Capshaw.