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Spielberg’s fascination with movies began at a very early
age. Born on December 18, 1947 in Cincinnati, Ohio, Steven Spielberg was born
in 1946 into a Jewish family headed by his mother Leah and father Arnold
Spielberg. Spielberg studied film at California State University. His short
feature Amblin' (1969) which was only 24 minutes long, led to his becoming the
youngest director ever to be signed to a long-term deal with a major Hollywood
studio (Universal). The movie had a $15,000 budget, provided by a friend whom
was also trying to achieve his big break in the industry. Amblin won
several film festival awards including a showing at the Atlanta Film Festival
in 1969.
But it was with his 1974's "The Sugarland Express" that he
graduated fully into feature films. His film Jaws
(1975) firmly established him as a filmmaker of repute. This was followed by
Star
Wars, which was another runaway hit. 1977's "Close
Encounters of the Third Kind”, was another staggering success,
employing state-of-the-art special effects to document its story of contact
with alien life. With the 1979 slapstick war comedy (1941)
Spielberg made his first major mistake, as the star-studded picture performed
miserably at the box office.
However, he swiftly regained his footing with "Raiders
of the Lost Ark”(1980), produced by Lucas. The film was one of the
biggest hits of the decade, later launching a pair of sequels as well as a
short-lived television series. However, it was Spielberg's next effort which
truly asserted his position as the era's most popular filmmaker: 1982's
E.T.
the Extra Terrestrial, the touching tale of a boy who befriends an
alien, was hailed upon release as an instant classic, ultimately becoming one
of the most commercially successful movie of all time.
His next picture, Empire
of the Sun, and was one of his few box-office disappointments. A
similar fate met the sentimental Always,
a remake of the wartime weeper A Guy Named Joe but Spielberg returned to form
with 1989's "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade".
His $60 million production of Hook
in 1991, Spielberg failed to generate much box-office returns. But two years
later his Jurassic
Park, a special-effects extravaganza raked in over $1 billion. That
same year, he released Schindler's
List, an epic docu-drama set during the Holocaust. Again, a number
of Oscar nominations were forthcoming, but this time Spielberg was rewarded for
his accomplishments — the picture won seven Academy Awards, including
"Best Picture" and "Best Director" honors. This movie is
Spielberg’s personal favourite, as he admits this is ""the best film I've
ever made." Spielberg also explains that he was originally developing
Michael Crichton's popular TV series ER as a feature film, but switched
to Jurassic Park when Crichton revealed the premise of his
then-in-progress dinosaur thriller.
He also served as executive producer on films such as Twister
(1996), Men
in Black (1997), and two 1998 films, Deep
Impact and
The Mask of Zorro. He continued his directorial spree in the smash hit
The
Lost World – a sequel to Jurassic Park. His next venture -
Amistad
a slavery epic - for which he served as both director and producer, won several
Oscar and Golden Globe nominations. His fascination with World War II, saw him
directing Saving
Private Ryan. The film bagged Golden Globe for Best Picture as well
as Best Director and won eleven Academy Award nominations.
His latest film Artificial
Intelligence, a sci-fi replete with technical wizardry that contains
shades of the Empire
of the Sun, has set the cash registers ringing at the box-office.
Just proves yet again that Spielberg is the director with the Midas touch,
ensuring that every movie he makes is par excellence and a virtual
money-spinner.
Using his tremendous success as a springboard, DreamWorks
SKG was formed in 1994. The first new movie studio to form in Hollywood in over
75 years, DreamWorks joined the forces of Spielberg, Jeffery Katzenberg
(formerly with Disney) and David Geffen (of Geffen Records) along with the
backing of numerous outside partners and investors.
Personally,Spielberg credits much of his success and happiness to his wife and children.
He met actress Cate Capshaw at auditions for "Indiana
Jones and the Temple of Doom" in which she was cast as the leading role,
and the couple married seven years later. The couple has a total of 7 children
(2 adopted and 2 from previous marriages).
As a major American icon, Spielberg has written, acted in, directed and or
produced many award-winning, top grossing movies of all time.Roger Ebert (Sun-Times film critic) has
stated, "If Spielberg never directed another film, his place in movie history
would be secure. No other director has been more successful at the box office
and few have placed more titles on various lists of great films. No director or
producer has ever put together a more popular body of work. That’s why the
movies we’re seeing are made in his image."
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