Steven Spielberg Biography

Writer, director, producer. Born December 18, 1947, in Cincinnati, Ohio. An amateur filmmaker as a child, he became one of the youngest television directors at Universal Studios. A highly praised television film, Duel (1972), brought him the opportunity to direct for the cinema, and a string of hits have made him the most commercially successful director of all time. His 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. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982). Spielberg's later films include literary adaptations, such as The Color Purple (1985) and Empire of the Sun (1987), as well as 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 his version of Peter Pan, Hook (1991), as well as Jurassic Park (1993), and its sequel The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997). In 1993, Spielberg won a Best Director Academy Award for the Holocaust film Schindler's List, a film which also won an Oscar for Best Picture. He won another Best Director Academy Award for his World War II film Saving Private Ryan (1998). Spielberg has seven children: one with his first wife Amy Irving, and the rest with his current wife, Kate Capshaw. .