Steven Allan Spielberg (/ˈspiːlbɜːrɡ/; born December 18, 1946) is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. A major figure of the New Hollywood era and pioneer of the modern blockbuster, he is the most commercially successful director in history.[1] He is the recipient of many accolades, including three Academy Awards, two BAFTA Awards, and four Directors Guild of America Awards, as well as the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1995, the Kennedy Center Honor in 2006, the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2009 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015. Seven of his films have been inducted into the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant".[2][3]

Spielberg was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and grew up in Phoenix, Arizona.[4] 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 later received an international theatrical release. He made his theatrical film debut with The Sugarland Express (1974) and became a household name with the 1975 summer blockbuster Jaws. He directed more box office successes with Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), and the original Indiana Jones trilogy (1981–89). He subsequently explored drama in The Color Purple (1985) and Empire of the Sun (1987).

In 1993, Spielberg directed back-to-back blockbuster hits with the science fiction thriller Jurassic Park, the highest-grossing film ever at the time, and the Holocaust drama Schindler's List, which has often been listed as one of the greatest films ever made. He won the Academy Award for Best Director for the latter and the 1998 World War II epic Saving Private Ryan. Spielberg has since directed the science fiction films A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), Minority Report (2002), and War of the Worlds (2005); the adventure films The Adventures of Tintin (2011) and Ready Player One (2018); the historical dramas Amistad (1997), Munich (2005), War Horse (2011), Lincoln (2012), Bridge of Spies (2015) and The Post (2017); the musical West Side Story (2021); and the semi-autobiographical drama The Fabelmans (2022).

Spielberg co-founded Amblin Entertainment and DreamWorks, and he has served as a producer for many successful films and television series, among them Poltergeist (1982), Gremlins (1984), Back to the Future (1985), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) and Band of Brothers (1999). He has had a long collaboration with the composer John Williams, with whom he has worked for all but five of his feature films.[5][6] Several of Spielberg's works are considered among the greatest films in history, and some are among the highest-grossing films ever.[7] In 2013, Time listed him as one of the 100 most influential people,[8] and in 2023, Spielberg was the recipient of the first ever TIME100 Impact Award in the U.S.[9] Reviewing Close Encounters, Pauline Kael called the young Spielberg "a magician in the age of movies."[10]

Spielberg was born on December 18, 1946, in Cincinnati, Ohio.[11][12] His mother, Leah (née Posner, later Adler; 1920–2017),[13] was a restaurateur and concert pianist, and his father, Arnold Spielberg (1917–2020),[14] was an electrical engineer involved in the development of computers. His immediate family were situationally[15] Reform Jewish/Orthodox Jewish.[16][17] Spielberg's paternal grandparents were Jews from Ukraine;[18][19] his grandmother Rebecca, maiden name Chechik, was from Sudylkiv, and his grandfather Shmuel Spielberg was from Kamianets-Podilskyi.[20][21] Schmuel escaped to Cincinnati in 1906 to avoid being drafted into the Russian army, and he brought his fiancée Rebecca there in 1908.[22] Spielberg has three younger sisters: Anne, Sue, and Nancy.[23] In 1952, his family moved to Haddon Township, New Jersey after his father was hired by RCA.[24] Spielberg attended Hebrew school from 1953 to 1957, in classes taught by Rabbi Albert L. Lewis.[25]

In early 1957, the family moved to Phoenix, Arizona.[26][27] Spielberg had a bar mitzvah ceremony when he was thirteen.[28] His family was involved in the synagogue and had many Jewish friends.[29] Of the Holocaust, he said that his parents "talked about it all the time, and so it was always on my mind."[29] His father had lost between sixteen and twenty relatives in the Holocaust.[21] Spielberg found it difficult accepting his heritage; he said: "It isn't something I enjoy admitting ... but when I was seven, eight, nine years old, God forgive me, I was embarrassed because we were Orthodox Jews. I was embarrassed by the outward perception of my parents' Jewish practices. I was never really ashamed to be Jewish, but I was uneasy at times."[30][31] Spielberg also suffered from anti-Semitism: "In high school, I got smacked and kicked around. Two bloody noses. It was horrible."[32][33][21] He grew away from Judaism during adolescence, after his family had moved to various neighborhoods and found themselves to be the only Jews.[34][35]

Spielberg's interest in film started at a young age. At age 12, he made his first home movie: a train wreck involving his toy Lionel trains.[36] In 1958, he became a Boy Scout and fulfilled a requirement for the photography merit badge by making a nine-minute 8 mm film, The Last Gunfight.[37][38] He eventually attained the rank of Eagle Scout.[39] Spielberg used his father's movie camera to make amateur features, and began taking the camera along on every Scout trip.[40] At age 13, Spielberg made a 40-minute war film, Escape to Nowhere, with a cast of classmates. The film won first prize in a statewide competition.[41][42] Throughout his early teens, and after entering high school, Spielberg made about fifteen to twenty 8 mm adventure films.[43][44]

In Phoenix, Spielberg watched films at the local theater every Saturday.[45] Some of the films he cited as early influences include Ishirō Honda and Eiji Tsuburaya's Godzilla, King of the Monsters! (1956),[46][47] Akira Kurosawa's films,[48][49] Captains Courageous (1937), Pinocchio (1940), and David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia (1962), which he called "the film that set me on my journey".[50] He attended Arcadia High School in 1961 for three years.[51] He wrote and directed his first independent film in 1963, a 140-minute science fiction adventure, Firelight, which later inspired Close Encounters of The Third Kind. The film, funded mainly by his father, had a budget of under $600, and was shown in a local theater for one evening.[52][53] In the summer of 1964, he worked as an unpaid assistant at Universal Studios' editorial department.[54][55] His family later moved to Saratoga, California, where he attended Saratoga High School, graduating in 1965.[56] A year later, his parents divorced. Spielberg moved to Los Angeles to stay with his father,[57] while his three sisters and mother remained in Saratoga. He was not interested in academics, aspiring only to be a filmmaker.[58] He applied to the University of Southern California's film school but was turned down because of his mediocre grades.[59] He then applied and enrolled at California State University, Long Beach, where he became a brother of Theta Chi Fraternity.[60][61]

After taking a tour bus to Universal Studios, a chance conversation with an executive led to Spielberg getting a three-day pass to the premises, allowing him to come back the next day. On the fourth day he walked up to the studio gates without a pass, and the security guard waved him in: "I basically spent the next two months at Universal Studios. And that was how I became an unofficial apprentice that summer."[62]

In 1968, Universal gave Spielberg the opportunity to write and direct a short film for theatrical release, the 26-minute 35 mm Amblin'. Studio vice president Sidney Sheinberg was impressed by the film, and offered Spielberg a seven-year directing contract.[63] A year later, he dropped out of college to begin directing television productions for Universal.[64] It made him the youngest director to be signed to a long-term plan with a major Hollywood studio.[65] Spielberg returned to Long Beach in 2002 to complete his Bachelor of Arts in Film and Electronic Media.[66]