Steven Spielberg

Steven Allan Spielberg ( ; born December 18, 1946) is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. A figure of the New Hollywood era, he is the most commercially successful director of all time. Spielberg is the recipient of various accolades, including three Academy Awards (including two Best Director wins), a Kennedy Center honor, a Cecil B. DeMille Award, and an AFI Life Achievement Award. In 2013, Time listed him as one of the 100 most influential people.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) which gained acclaim from critics and audiences. He made his directorial film debut with The Sugarland Express (1974), and became a household name with the 1975 summer blockbuster Jaws. He then directed box office successes Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), and the Indiana Jones series. Spielberg explored drama in The Color Purple (1985) and Empire of the Sun (1987).After a brief hiatus, Spielberg directed the science fiction thriller Jurassic Park, the highest-grossing film ever at the time, and the Holocaust drama Schindler's List (both 1993), described as one of the greatest films ever made. In 1998, he directed the World War II epic Saving Private Ryan. Spielberg continued in the 2000s with science fiction, including A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), Minority Report (2002), and War of the Worlds (2005). He also directed the children's adventure films The Adventures of Tintin (2011), The BFG (2016), and Ready Player One (2018), and the historical dramas Amistad (1997), Munich (2005), War Horse (2011), Lincoln (2012), Bridge of Spies (2015), The Post (2017), and the musical West Side Story (2021).Spielberg co-founded Amblin Entertainment and DreamWorks, and has served as a producer for many television series and films. He is also known for his long collaboration with the composer John Williams, with whom he has worked for all but five of his feature films. Several of Spielberg's works are among the highest-grossing films of all time. Seven have been inducted into the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".