Spielberg was born on December 18, 1946, in Cincinnati, Ohio.[10][11] His mother, Leah (née Posner, later Adler),[12] was a concert pianist and ran a kosher dairy restaurant,[13] and his father, Arnold,[14] was an electrical engineer involved in the development of computers. His immediate family were [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] Spielberg has three younger sisters: Anne, Sue, and Nancy.[22] In 1952, his family moved to Haddon Township, New Jersey after his father was hired by RCA.[23] Spielberg attended Hebrew school from 1953 to 1957, in classes taught by Rabbi Albert L. Lewis.[24] At their home in Cincinnati, his grandmother taught English to Holocaust survivors. They, in turn, taught him numbers:
One man in particular, I kept looking at his numbers–his number tattooed on his forearm... he started – you know, when–during the dinner break, when everybody was eating and not learning, he would point to the numbers. And he would say, that is a two, and that is a four. And then he'd say, and this is a eight, and that's a one. And I'll never forget this. And he said, and that's a nine. And then he crooked his arm and inverted his arm and said, and see, it becomes a six. It's magic. And now it's a nine, and now it's a six, and now it's a nine and now it's a six. And that's really how I learned my numbers for the first time... the irony of all that, and the gift of that lesson, never really dawned on me until I was much older.[15]
In early 1957, the family moved to Phoenix, Arizona.[25][26] Spielberg had a bar mitzvah ceremony when he was thirteen.[27] His family was involved in the synagogue and had many Jewish friends.[28] Of the Holocaust, he said that his parents "talked about it all the time, and so it was always on my mind."[28] 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."[29][30] Spielberg was the target of anti-Semitism: "In high school, I got smacked and kicked around. Two bloody noses. It was horrible."[31][32][21] He gradually followed Judaism less during adolescence, after his family had moved to various neighborhoods and found themselves to be the only Jews.[33][34]
He recalls his parents taking him to see Cecil B. DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth (1952). He had never seen a movie before, and thought they were taking him to the circus. He was terrified by the movie's train crash, and at age 12, he recreated it with his Lionel trains and filmed it. He recalls: "The trains went around and around, and after a while that got boring, and I had this eight-millimeter camera, and I staged a train wreck and filmed it. That was hard on the trains, but then I could cut the film lots of different ways and look at it over and over again." This was his first home movie.[35][36] In 1958, he became a Boy Scout, eventually attaining the rank of Eagle Scout.[37] He fulfilled a requirement for the photography merit badge by making a nine-minute 8 mmWestern, The Last Gunfight.[38][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] He recalls that
my dad told me stories about World War II constantly... I knew, based on the stories my dad and his friends were telling about World War II, that there was no glory in war. And it was ugly, and it was cruel... it was, you know, visually devastating. And so I thought, someday, if I ever do make a war movie for real, it's got to be something that tells the truth about what those experiences had been for those young 17-, 18-, 19-year-old boys storming Omaha Beach, let's say.[15]
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. 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... that was how I became an unofficial apprentice that summer."[55][56] His family later moved to Saratoga, California, where he attended Saratoga High School.[57] A year later, his parents divorced. Spielberg moved to Los Angeles to stay with his father,[58] while his three sisters and mother remained in Saratoga. He recalls:
My parents split up when I was 15 or 16 years old, and I needed a special friend, and had to use my imagination to take me to places that felt good – that helped me move beyond the problems my parents were having, and that ended our family as a whole. And thinking about that time, I thought, an extraterrestrial character would be the perfect springboard to purge the pain of your parents' splitting up.[35]
He recalls his mother had "a huge adventurous personality. We always saw her as Peter Pan, the kid who never wanted to grow up, and she sort of saw herself that way. I think my mom lived a lot of childhoods in her ninety-seven years."[15] He was not interested in academics, aspiring only to be a filmmaker.[59] He applied to the University of Southern California's film school but was turned down because of his mediocre grades.[60] He then applied and enrolled at California State University, Long Beach, where he became a brother of Theta Chi Fraternity.[61] In 1968, Universal gave Spielberg the opportunity to write and direct a short film for theatrical release, the 26-minute 35 mmAmblin'. Studio vice president Sidney Sheinberg was impressed and offered Spielberg a seven-year directing contract.[62] A year later, he dropped out of college to begin directing television productions for Universal,[63] making him the youngest director to be signed to a long-term plan with a major Hollywood studio.[64] Spielberg returned to Long Beach in 2002, where he presented Schindler's List to complete his Bachelor of Arts in Film and Electronic Media.[65]
He recalls a formative encounter with one of his favorite directors, John Ford, who said: "So they tell me you want to be a picture maker. You see those paintings around the office?" Spielberg said he did. Ford pointed to a painting and asked, "Where's the horizon?" Spielberg said it was at the top. Ford asked him where it was in another painting. Spielberg said it was at the bottom. Ford said, "When you're able to distinguish the art of the horizon at the bottom of a frame or at the top of the frame, but not going right through the center of the frame, when you can appreciate why it's at the top and why it's at the bottom, you might make a pretty good picture maker."[66]
Career
1969–1974: On the horizon
Spielberg made his professional debut with "Eyes", a segment of Night Gallery (1969) scripted by Rod Serling and starring Joan Crawford.[67] Initially, there was skepticism from Crawford and studio executives regarding Spielberg's inexperience. Despite Spielberg's efforts to implement advanced camerawork techniques, studio executives demanded a more straightforward approach. His initial contributions received mixed responses, leading Spielberg to briefly step back from studio work.[68] Crawford, reflecting on her collaboration with Spielberg, recognized his potential, noting his unique intuitive inspiration. She expressed her appreciation for Spielberg's talent in a note to him and also communicated her approval to Serling. Crawford's endorsement highlighted Spielberg's early recognition in Hollywood despite initial hesitations regarding his experience.[69]
In the early 1970s, Spielberg unsuccessfully tried to raise financing for his own low-budget films. He co-wrote and directed teleplays for Marcus Welby, M.D., The Name of the Game, Columbo, Owen Marshall, Counselor at Law and The Psychiatrist.[70] Although unsatisfied with his work,[71] Spielberg used the opportunity to experiment with his techniques and learn about filmmaking. He earned good reviews and impressed producers; he was earning a steady income and relocated to Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles.[70]
Impressed, Universal signed Spielberg to do four television films.[72] The first was Duel (1971), adapted from Richard Matheson's short story of the same name, about a salesman (Dennis Weaver) being chased down a highway by a psychotic tanker truck driver.[73] Impressed, executives decided to promote the film on television. Reviews were positive, and Universal asked Spielberg to shoot more scenes so that Duel could be released to international markets.[74] "Deservedly so" writes David Thomson, "for it stands up as one of the medium's most compelling spirals of suspense. The ordinariness of the Dennis Weaver character and the monstrous malignance of the truck confront one another with a narrative assurance that never needs to remind us of the element of fable."[75] More TV films followed: Something Evil (1972) and Savage (1973).
Spielberg made his theatrical debut with The Sugarland Express (1974), based on a true story about a married couple on the run, desperate to regain custody of their baby from foster parents.[76] The film starred Goldie Hawn and William Atherton and marked the first of many collaborations with the composer John Williams.[77] Although the film was awarded Best Screenplay at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival, it was not a commercial success,[77][78] which Spielberg blamed on Universal's inconsistent marketing.[79] The film opened in four hundred theaters in the US to positive reviews; Pauline Kael wrote "Spielberg uses his gifts in a very free-and-easy, American way—for humor, and for a physical response to action. He could be that rarity among directors, a born entertainer—perhaps a new generation's Howard Hawks."[80]The Hollywood Reporter wrote that "a major new director is on the horizon."[81]
1975–1980: Magician
Producers Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown took a chance with Spielberg, giving him the opportunity to direct Jaws (1975), a thriller based on Peter Benchley's bestseller. In it, a great white shark attacks beachgoers at a summer resort town, prompting police chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) to hunt it down with the help of a marine biologist (Richard Dreyfuss) and a veteran shark hunter (Robert Shaw). Jaws was the first movie shot on open ocean,[82] so shooting proved difficult, especially when the mechanical shark malfunctioned. The shooting schedule overran by a hundred days, and Universal threatened to cancel production.[83] Against expectations, Jaws was a success, setting the domestic box office record and making Spielberg a household name.[84] It won Academy Awards for Best Film Editing (Verna Fields), Best Original Dramatic Score (John Williams) and Best Sound (Robert Hoyt, Roger Heman, Earl Madery and John Carter). Spielberg said the malfunctioning of the mechanical shark resulted in a better movie, as he had to find other ways to suggest the shark's presence. After seeing the unconventional camera techniques of Jaws, Alfred Hitchcock praised "young Spielberg" for thinking outside the visual dynamics of the theater: "He's the first one of us who doesn't see the proscenium arch".[85] Thomson writes
like Coppola on The Godfather, Spielberg asserted his own role and deftly organized the elements into a roller coaster entertainment without sacrificing inner meanings. The suspense of the picture came from meticulous technique and good humor about its own surgical cutting. You have only to submit to the travesty of Jaws 2 to realize how much more engagingly Spielberg saw the ocean, the perils, the sinister beauty of the shark, and the vitality of its human opponents.[75]
After declining an offer to make Jaws 2[86] Spielberg and Dreyfuss reunited to work on a film about UFOs, Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). Spielberg used 65 mm film for the best picture quality, and a new live-action recording system so that the recordings could be duplicated later.[87][88] He cast one of his favorite directors, François Truffaut, as the scientist Claude Lacombe and worked with special effects expert Douglas Trumbull. It marked the first of many collaborations between Spielberg and editor Michael Kahn.[89] One of the rare films both written and directed by Spielberg, Close Encounters was very popular with filmgoers[90] and won Academy Awards for Best Cinematography (Vilmos Zsigmond) and Best Sound Effects Editing (Frank Warner).[91]Stanley Kauffmann wrote: "I saw Close Encounters at its first public showing in New York, and most of the audience stayed on and on to watch the credits crawl lengthily at the end. For one thing, under the credits the giant spaceship was returning to the stars. For another, they just didn’t want to leave this picture. For still another, they seemed to understand the importance of those many names to what they had just seen." Kauffmann placed it first on his list of the best American films from 1968 to 1977.[92] Reviewing Close Encounters, Kael called Spielberg "a magician in the age of movies."[93]
His next directorial work was 1941 (1979), an action-comedy written by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale about Californians preparing for a Japanese invasion after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Spielberg was self-conscious about doing comedy as he had no prior experience in the genre.[94] Universal and Columbia agreed to co-finance the film. 1941 grossed over $92.4 million worldwide upon release,[95] but most critics, and the studio heads, disliked it.[94]Charles Champlin described 1941 as "the most conspicuous waste since the last major oil spill, which it somewhat resembles."[96]Stanley Kubrick supposedly said that the film was "great, but not funny."[97]
Raiders of the Lost Ark is an out-of-body experience, a movie of glorious imagination and breakneck speed that grabs you in the first shot, hurtles you through a series of incredible adventures, and deposits you back in reality two hours later–breathless, dizzy, wrung-out, and with a silly grin on your face ... For locations, it ticks off the jungles of South America, the hinterlands of Tibet, the deserts of Egypt, a hidden submarine base, an isolated island, a forgotten tomb–no, make that two forgotten tombs–and an American archaeology classroom. For villains, it has sadistic Nazis, slimy gravediggers, drunken Sherpas, and scheming Frenchmen. For threats, it climaxes with the wrath of God, and leads up to that spectacular development by easy stages, with tarantulas, runaway boulders, hidden spears, falling rock slabs, burning airplanes, runaway trucks, sealed tombs, and snakes. Lots of snakes.[102]
Raiders was the first film in the Indiana Jones franchise.
Spielberg returned to science fiction with E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982). It tells the story of Elliot (Henry Thomas), a young boy who befriends an alien who was accidentally left behind by his companions and is attempting to return home. Spielberg eschewed storyboards so that his direction would be more spontaneous, and shot roughly in sequence so that the actors' performances would be authentic as they bonded with and said goodbye to E.T.Richard Corliss recalled:
This was the closing-night attraction at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival, a venue not known for blubbering sentiment. At the end, as the little critter bade his farewells and the Jules Verne-like space ship left the ground, the audience similarly levitated. One heard the audience's childlike applause; one felt their spirits lift. This was rapture made audible, palpable ... Screenwriter Melissa Mathison lent a fairy-tale clarity to the director's standard plot of a lost boy seeking his way back home. And Spielberg orchestrated the movements of the camera and the puppet spaceman with the feelings of—it has to be called love—expressed in young Henry Thomas' yearning face. E.T. was the first film character to be a finalist in TIME’s Man of the Year sweepstakes. It would have been fine with me if the little creature, this lovely film, had won.[103]
His voice is ancient and otherworldly but friendly, humorous. And this scaly, wrinkled little man with huge, wide-apart, soulful eyes and a jack-in-the-box neck has been so fully created that he's a friend to us, too; when he speaks of his longing to go home the audience becomes as mournful as Elliot. Spielberg has earned the tears that some people in the audience—and not just children—shed. The tears are tokens of gratitude for the spell the picture has put on the audience. Genuinely entrancing movies are almost as rare as extraterrestrial visitors.[106]
Spielberg and Chandran Rutnam in Sri Lanka during the filming of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
His next feature film was the Raiders of the Lost ArkprequelIndiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984). Working again with Lucas and Ford, the film was shot in the United States, Sri Lanka and China.[108] The film was darker than its predecessor, and led to the creation of the PG-13 rating because some content was deemed unsuitable for children under 13.[109] Spielberg later said that he was unhappy with Temple of Doom because it lacked his "personal touches and love".[110] Nonetheless, the film was a blockbuster hit,[111] won the Academy Award for Best Special Effects and received mostly good reviews.[110] Kael preferred it to the original, writing:
Spielberg is like a magician whose tricks are so daring they make you laugh. He creates an atmosphere of happy disbelief: the more breathtaking and exhilarating the stunts are the funnier they are. Nobody has ever fused thrills and laughter in quite the way that he does here. He starts off at full charge in the opening sequence and just keeps going.
She conceded that it was less "sincere" than Raiders, adding "that's what is so good about it."[112] On this project Spielberg met his future wife, Kate Capshaw, who played Willie Scott.[113] Spielberg recalled, "The second film I could have done a lot better if there had been a different story. It was a good learning exercise for me to really throw myself into a black hole. I came out of the darkness of Temple Of Doom and I entered the light of the woman I was eventually going to marry and raise a family with."[114]
In the early 1980s, Spielberg befriended Warner Communications CEO Steve Ross eventually resulting in Spielberg making films for Warner Bros.[119] It began with The Color Purple (1985), an adaptation of Alice Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, about a generation of empowered African-American women during depression-era America. It was Spielberg's first film on a dramatic subject matter, and he expressed reservations about tackling the project: "It's the risk of being judged-and accused of not having the sensibility to do character studies."[120] Starring Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey, the film was a box office hit and critics started to take note of Spielberg's foray into drama.[120] Ebert named it the best film of the year.[121] The film also received eleven Academy Award nominations, and Spielberg won Best Director from the Directors Guild of America.[120] The film was produced and scored by Quincy Jones.
As China underwent economic reform and opened up to the American film industry, Spielberg made Empire of the Sun (1987), the first American film shot in Shanghai since the 1930s.[122] It is an adaptation of J. G. Ballard's autobiographical novel about Jamie Graham (Christian Bale), a young boy who goes from being the son of a wealthy British family in Shanghai to a prisoner of war in a Japanese internment camp during World War II. It was written by playwright Tom Stoppard and co-starred John Malkovich as an American expatriate. Critical reaction was mixed at the time of release; criticism ranged from the "overwrought" plot to Spielberg's downplaying of "disease and starvation".[123][124] However, Andrew Sarris named it the best film of the year and later included it among the best of the decade.[125] The film was nominated for six Academy Awards,[126] but was a disappointment at the box office; Ian Alterman of The New York Times thought it was overlooked by audiences.[127] Spielberg recalled that Empire of the Sun was one of his most enjoyable films to make.[128] Thomson called it "a great work through and through" and "the first clear sign that Spielberg the showman was an artist, too."[129]
After The Color Purple and Empire of the Sun, Spielberg intended to direct Rain Man, but instead directed Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) to meet his contractual obligations.[130] Producer Lucas and star Ford returned for the film. A longtime James Bond fan, Spielberg cast Sean Connery as Jones's father, Henry Jones, Sr.[128] Due to complaints about violence in Temple of Doom, Spielberg returned to more family-friendly fare for the third installment.[131]Last Crusade received mostly positive reviews and was a box office success, earning $474 million; it was his biggest hit since E.T.[132] Biographer Joseph McBride wrote that it was a comeback for Spielberg, and Spielberg acknowledged the amount he has learned from making the Indiana Jones series.[132] Ebert wrote that
If there is just a shade of disappointment after seeing this movie, it has to be because we will never again have the shock of this material seeming new. Raiders of the Lost Ark, now more than ever, seems a turning point in the cinema of escapist entertainment, and there was really no way Spielberg could make it new all over again. What he has done is to take many of the same elements, and apply all of his craft and sense of fun to make them work yet once again. And they do.[133]
Spielberg, March 1990
Also in 1989, he reunited with Richard Dreyfuss for the romantic drama Always, about an aerial firefighter. It is a modern remake of one of Spielberg's favorite childhood films, A Guy Named Joe (1943). The story was personal; he said "As a child I was very frustrated, and maybe I saw my own parents [in A Guy Named Joe]. I was also short of girlfriends. And it stuck with me."[134] Spielberg had discussed the film with Dreyfuss back in 1975, with up to twelve drafts being written before filming commenced.[131]Always was commercially unsuccessful and received mixed reviews.[135][131]Janet Maslin of TheNew York Times wrote, "Always is filled with big, sentimental moments, it lacks the intimacy to make any of this very moving."[136]
1991–1998: Oscar winner
After a brief setback in which Spielberg felt "artistically stalled",[137] he returned in 1991 with Hook, about a middle-aged Peter Pan (Robin Williams), who returns to Neverland and encounters Tinker Bell (Julia Roberts) and the eponymous Captain Hook (Dustin Hoffman). During filming, the stars clashed on set; Spielberg told 60 Minutes that he would never work with Roberts again.[138] Nominated for five Academy Awards, the studio enjoyed the film but most critics did not; Thomson called it "maudlin."[75] Writing for The Washington Post, Desson Howe described the film as "too industrially organized", and thought it mundane.[139] At the box office, it earned over $300 million worldwide from a $70 million budget.[140]
In 1993, Spielberg returned to the adventure genre with Jurassic Park, based on Michael Crichton's bestseller, with a screenplay by Crichton and David Koepp. Jurassic Park is set on a fictional island near Costa Rica, where a businessman (Richard Attenborough) has hired a team of geneticists to create a wildlife park of de-extinct dinosaurs. In a departure from his usual order of planning, Spielberg and the designers storyboarded certain sequences from the novel early on.[141] The film also used computer-generated imagery provided by Industrial Light & Magic; Jurassic Park was completed on time and became the highest-grossing film at the time, and won three Academy Awards.[142] The film's dominance during its theatrical run, as well as Spielberg's $250 million salary, made him self-conscious of his own success.[143]
Also in 1993, Spielberg directed Schindler's List, about Oskar Schindler, a businessman who helped save 1,100 Jews from the Holocaust.[144] Based on Schindler's Ark by Australian novelist Thomas Keneally, Spielberg waited ten years to make the film as he did not feel "mature" enough.[145] He wanted to embrace his heritage,[146][147] and after the birth of his son, Max, he said that "it greatly affected me [...] A spirit began to ignite in me, and I became a Jewish dad".[148] Filming commenced on March 1, 1993, in Poland, while Spielberg was still editing Jurassic Park in the evenings.[149] To make filming "bearable", Spielberg brought his wife and children with him.[150] Against expectations, the film was a commercial success, and Spielberg used his percentage of profits to start the Shoah Foundation, a non-profit organization that archives testimonies of Holocaust survivors.[151]Schindler's List won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Spielberg's first as Best Director.[152] It also won seven BAFTAs, and three Golden Globes.[153][154]Schindler's List is one of the American Film Institute's 100 best American films ever made.[155] Ebert wrote:
Flaubert once wrote that he disliked Uncle Tom's Cabin because the author was constantly preaching against slavery. 'Does one have to make observations about slavery?' he asked. 'Depict it; that's enough.' And then he added, 'An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere.' That would describe Spielberg, the author of this film. He depicts the evil of the Holocaust, and he tells an incredible story of how it was robbed of some of its intended victims. He does so without the tricks of his trade, the directorial and dramatic contrivances that would inspire the usual melodramatic payoffs. Spielberg is not visible in this film. But his restraint and passion are present in every shot.[156]
Filmmaker Claude Lanzmann, criticized the film for its weak representation of the Holocaust.[157]Imre Kertész, a Hungarian author and concentration camp survivor, also disliked the film, saying, "I regard as kitsch any representation of the Holocaust that is incapable of understanding or unwilling to understand the organic connection between our own deformed mode of life and the very possibility of the Holocaust."[158] Thomson calls it "the most moving film I have ever seen."[75]
In 1994, Spielberg took a break from directing to spend more time with his family, and set up his new film studio, DreamWorks, with Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen.[159][151] After his hiatus, he returned to directing with a sequel to Jurassic Park, The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997). A loose adaptation of Michael Crichton's novel The Lost World, the plot follows mathematician Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) and his researchers who study dinosaurs at Jurassic Park which is on an island and are confronted by another team with a different agenda. Spielberg wanted the onscreen creatures to be more realistic than in the first film; he used 3D storyboards, computer imagery and robotic puppets.[160] Budgeted at $73 million,[161]The Lost World: Jurassic Park opened in May 1997 and was one of the highest grossing films of the year.[162] The Village Voice critic opined that The Lost World was "better crafted but less fun" than the first film, while The Guardian wrote "It looks like a director on autopilot [...] The special effects brook no argument."[162]
Amistad (1997), his first film released under DreamWorks, was based on the true story of the events in 1839 aboard the slave ship La Amistad. Producer Debbie Allen, who had read the book Amistad I in 1978, thought Spielberg would be perfect to direct.[163] Spielberg was hesitant taking on the project, afraid that it would be compared to Schindler's List, but he said, "I've never planned my career [...] In the end I do what I think I gotta do."[163] Starring Morgan Freeman, Anthony Hopkins, Djimon Hounsou and Matthew McConaughey, Spielberg used Allen's ten years worth of research to reenact the difficult historical scenes.[161][164] The film struggled to find an audience, and underperformed at the box office;[165] Spielberg admitted that Amistad "became too much of a history lesson."[166]
Spielberg speaking at the Pentagon on August 11, 1999, after receiving the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service
Spielberg's 1998 release was World War II epic Saving Private Ryan, about a group of US soldiers led by Captain Miller (Tom Hanks) sent to bring home a paratrooper whose three older brothers were killed in the same twenty-four hours of the Normandy landing. Filming took place in England, and US MarineDale Dye was hired to train the actors and keep them in character during the combat scenes. Halfway through filming, Spielberg reminded the cast that they were making a tribute to thank "your grandparents and my dad, who fought in [the war]".[167] Upon release, critics praised the direction and its realistic portrayal of war.[168] The film grossed a successful $481 million worldwide[169] and Spielberg won a second Academy Award for Best Director.[170] In August 1999, Spielberg and Hanks were awarded the Distinguished Public Service Medal from Secretary of DefenseWilliam S. Cohen.[167][171] Thomson writes "Ryan changed war films: combat, shock, wounds, and fear had never been so graphically presented; and yet there was also a true sense of what duties and ideas had felt like in 1944. I disliked the framing device. I would have admired a director who trusted us to get there without that. Never mind—Ryan is a magnificent film."[75] Ebert wrote "Spielberg knows how to make audiences weep better than any director since Chaplin in City Lights. But weeping is an incomplete response, letting the audience off the hook. This film embodies ideas. After the immediate experience begins to fade, the implications remain and grow."[172]
1999–2012: Master of technology
Spielberg returned to science fiction with A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), a loose adaptation of Brian Aldiss's 1969 short story "Supertoys Last All Summer Long". Stanley Kubrick had first asked Spielberg to direct the feature in 1979. Spielberg tried to make it in the style that Kubrick would have,[173] though with mixed results according to some critics.[174] The plot revolves around an android, David (Haley Joel Osment) who, like Pinocchio, dreams of being a "real boy". Critics thought Spielberg directed with "sentimentality",[175] and Ebert wrote, "Here is one of the most ambitious films of recent years [...] but it miscalculates in asking us to invest our emotions in a character, a machine."[176] The film won five Saturn Awards[175] and grossed $236 million worldwide.[177]Jonathan Rosenbaum highly praised the film:
If the best movies are often those that change the rules, Steven Spielberg's sincere, cockeyed, serious, and sometimes masterful realization of Stanley Kubrick's ambitious late project deserves to be a contender... If A.I. Artificial Intelligence—a film whose split personality is apparent even in its two-part title—is as much a Kubrick movie as a Spielberg one, this is in large part because it defamiliarizes Spielberg, makes him strange. Yet it also defamiliarizes Kubrick, with equally ambiguous results—making his unfamiliarity familiar. Both filmmakers should be credited for the results—Kubrick for proposing that Spielberg direct the project and Spielberg for doing his utmost to respect Kubrick's intentions while making it a profoundly personal work.[178]
A. O. Scott called it "the best fairy tale–the most disturbing, complex and intellectually challenging boy's adventure story–Mr. Spielberg has made" and chose it as the best film of the year.[179]
Spielberg followed A.I. with the sci-fi neo-noirMinority Report (2002), based on Philip K. Dick's short story of the same name about a group of investigators who try to prevent crimes before they are committed. The film received critical acclaim. Ebert named Minority Report the best film of 2002, praising its craftsmanship:
here is Spielberg using every trick in the book and matching them without seams, so that no matter how he's achieving his effects, the focus is always on the story and the characters... Some directors place their trust in technology. Spielberg, who is a master of technology, trusts only story and character, and then uses everything else as a workman uses his tools.[180]
However, critic Todd McCarthy thought there was not enough action.[181] The film earned over $358 million worldwide.[182] Also in 2002, he released Catch Me If You Can, based on the autobiography of con-artist Frank Abagnale. Leonardo DiCaprio played Abangale; Christopher Walken and Hanks also starred. Spielberg said, "I have always loved movies about sensational rogues—they break the law, but you just have to love them for the moxie."[183] The film was a critical and commercial success.[184]
Spielberg worked with Hanks, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Stanley Tucci in The Terminal (2004), a lighthearted comedy about an Eastern European man stranded in an airport. The film was praised for its production design and was a commercial success, although reviews were mixed.[185] In 2005, Spielberg directed War of the Worlds, a co-production of Paramount and DreamWorks, based on H. G. Wells's novel of the same name; Spielberg had been a fan of the book and of George Pal's 1953 film.[186] Starring Tom Cruise and Dakota Fanning, the film is about an American dock worker who is forced to look after his children, from whom he lives separately, as he tries to protect and reunite them with their mother when extraterrestrials invade Earth. Spielberg used storyboards to help the actors react to computer imagery that they could not see and used natural lighting and camerawork to avoid an "over stylized" science fiction picture.[187] The film was a box office hit grossing over $600 million worldwide.[188]
Spielberg's Munich (2005) is about the Israeli government's secret retaliation after eleven Israeli Olympic athletes were kidnapped and murdered in the 1972 Munich massacre. The film is based on Vengeance, a book by Canadian journalist George Jonas.[189] It was previously adapted for the screen in the 1986 television film Sword of Gideon. Spielberg, who personally remembers the incident, sought advice from former president Bill Clinton, among others, before making the film because he did not want to cause further problems in the Middle East.[189] Although the film garnered mostly positive reviews, some critics perceived it as anti-Semitic;[190] it is one of Spielberg's most controversial films to date.[191]Munich received five Academy Awards nominations: Best Picture, Best Film Editing, Best Score, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Director for Spielberg. It was his sixth Best Director nomination, and fifth Best Picture nomination.[192][193]
Spielberg with Bill Clinton, 2009
In the mid-2000s, Spielberg scaled down his directing career and became more selective about film projects to undertake.[194] In December 2005, he and his partners sold DreamWorks to media conglomerate Viacom (now known as Paramount Global). The sale was finalized in February 2006.[193] In June 2006, Spielberg planned to make Interstellar, but abandoned the project, which was eventually directed by Christopher Nolan.[195] During this period, Spielberg remained active as a producer.
Spielberg returned to the Indiana Jones series in 2008 with the fourth installment, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Released nineteen years after Last Crusade, the film is set in 1957, pitting Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) against Soviet agents led by Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett), searching for a telepathiccrystal skull. Principal photography was complete in October 2007, and the film was released on May 22, 2008.[196][197] This was his first film not released by DreamWorks since 1997.[198] The film received generally favorable reviews from critics, but some fans were disappointed by the introduction of science fiction elements which were uncharacteristic of the previous films.[199][194] Writing for The Age, Tom Ryan praised Spielberg and George Lucas for their realistic 1950s setting—"The energy on display is impressive".[200] It was a box office success, grossing $790 million worldwide.[201]
Spielberg followed Tintin with War Horse, shot in England in the summer of 2010.[209] It was released four days after Tintin, on December 25, 2011. The film is based on Michael Morpurgo's 1982 novel of the same name and follows the long friendship between a British boy and his horse Joey before and during World War I.[210] Distributed by Walt Disney Studios with whom DreamWorks made a distribution deal in 2009, War Horse was the first of four consecutive Spielberg films released by Disney. It had an acclaimed response from critics[210] and was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture.[211] In a review for Salon magazine, Andrew O'Hehir wrote, "at this point in his career Spielberg is pursuing personal goals, and everything that's terrific and overly flat and tooth-rottingly sweet about War Horse reflects that."[212]
It was announced on May 2, 2013, that Spielberg would direct American Sniper,[219] but he left the project before production began.[220] Instead, he directed Bridge of Spies (2015), a Cold War thriller based on the 1960 U-2 incident, and focusing on James B. Donovan's negotiations with the Soviets for the release of pilot Gary Powers after his aircraft was shot down over Soviet territory. It was written by Matt Charman and the Coen brothers, and starred Tom Hanks as Donovan, as well as Mark Rylance, Amy Ryan and Alan Alda.[221] It was filmed in the fall of 2014 in New York City, Berlin and Wroclaw, and was released on October 16.[222][223]Bridge of Spies was popular with critics,[224] and was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture; Rylance won Best Supporting Actor, becoming the second actor to win for a performance directed by Spielberg.[225]
A year later, Spielberg directed The Post, an account of The Washington Post's printing of the Pentagon Papers.[232] Starring Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep, production began in New York on May 30, 2017.[233] Spielberg stated his attraction to the project: "When I read the first draft of the script, this wasn't something that could wait three years or two years—this was a story I felt we needed to tell today."[234] The film received a wide release on January 12, 2018.[235]The Post gained positive reception; the critic from the Associated Press thought "Spielberg infuses every scene with tension and life and the grandeur of the ordinary that he's always been so good at conveying."[236] In 2017, Spielberg and Paul Greengrass, Francis Ford Coppola, Guillermo del Toro and Lawrence Kasdan were featured in the Netflix documentary series Five Came Back, about the war-related works of directors Frank Capra, John Ford, John Huston, George Stevens and William Wyler. Spielberg was also an executive producer.[237]
Spielberg promoting Ready Player One (2018) in Japan
Spielberg's 2022 film The Fabelmans is a fictionalized account of his own adolescence, which he wrote with Tony Kushner.[251]Gabriel LaBelle plays Sammy Fabelman, a character inspired by Spielberg, while Michelle Williams plays Sammy's mother Mitzi Fabelman, Paul Dano plays Burt Fabelman, his father, Seth Rogen plays Bennie Loewy, Burt's best friend and co-worker who becomes Sammy's surrogate uncle, and Judd Hirsch as Mitzi's Uncle Boris.[252][253] Filming began in Los Angeles in July 2021, and the film premiered at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival on September 10, Spielberg's first appearance at that festival.[254] It received widespread critical acclaim and won the festival's People's Choice Award.[255] It received a limited theatrical release on November 11, 2022, by Universal Pictures, before expanding wide on November 23.[256] Despite the favorable critical reception, West Side Story and The Fabelmans were box office failures, which Variety suggested could be attributed to a decline in the popularity of Spielberg in a film-going environment altered by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the public's loss of interest in prestige films.[257]The Fabelmans received seven Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay.[258][259] It was, however, a major box office success in France and became the highest-rated film of the 21st century in the country, with a 4.9 average from critics on AlloCiné from 43 reviews, with all but 6 giving the film 5 stars. Cahiers du Cinéma wrote that Spielberg, at age 76, had "come to represent like no other, the idea of cinema as wonder, at a time when the relationship to the spectacular and the cinema seems more tormented than ever" and declared that the film will "undoubtedly remain the most important and singular film of his career."[260][261]
Spielberg had planned to direct Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, but he stepped down and was replaced by James Mangold. Spielberg said that he would remain "hands on" as a producer,[262][263] along with Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall. In 2016, it was announced that it would be written by David Koepp,[264] with a release by Disney on July 19, 2019.[265] After a change of filming and release dates,[266][267] it was postponed again when Jonathan Kasdan was announced as the film's new writer.[268] Soon after, a new release date of July 9, 2021, was announced.[269] In May 2019, Dan Fogelman was hired to write a new script, and Kasdan's story, focused on the Nazi gold train, would not be used; the script was ultimately credited to Mangold, Koepp, Jez Butterworth, and John-Henry Butterworth.[270] In April 2020, it was announced that the release of the film was delayed to July 29, 2022, due to the COVID-19 pandemic,[271] and in October 2021, the release date was again delayed to June 30, 2023.[272] The film began production in the UK in June 2021[273] and finished in February 2022.[274]
In 1993, Spielberg served as an executive producer for the NBC science fiction series seaQuest DSV;[282] the show was not a hit.[115] In 1994, he found success producing the medical drama ER.[282]
That year, Spielberg founded DreamWorks with Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen.[159][151] Spielberg cited greater creative control and distribution improvements as the main reasons for founding his own studio;[283] he and his partners compared themselves to the founders of United Artists in 1919.[284] DreamWorks' investors included Microsoft founders Paul Allen and Bill Gates.[285] After founding DreamWorks, Spielberg continued to operate Amblin Entertainment and direct films for other studios.[286] He helped design Jurassic Park: The Ride at Universal Studios Florida.[287] The workload of filmmaking and operating a studio raised questions about his commitments, but Spielberg maintained that "this is all fitting nicely into my life and I'm still home by six and I'm still home on the weekends."[288][283][284] In 1998, DreamWorks Animation produced its first full-length animated features, Antz and The Prince of Egypt. Shrek (2001) was the first winner of the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.
In January 2013, HBO confirmed that it was developing a World War II miniseries based on the book Donald L. Miller's Masters of the Air with Spielberg and Hanks.[296]NME reported in March 2017 that production was under the working title The Mighty Eighth.[297] By 2019, it was confirmed development of the miniseries, now titled Masters of the Air, had moved to Apple TV+.[298] The series premiered on January 26, 2024. On January 18, 2023, Spielberg told press at a red carpet event for The Fabelmans that he was executive producing a documentary about John Williams, directed by Laurent Bouzereau with production companies Amblin Television, Imagine Documentaries, and Nedland Media.[299][300][301][302] Other executive producers for the film include Brian Grazer, Ron Howard, Darryl Frank, Justin Falvey, Justin Wilkes, Sara Bernstein, and Meredith Kaulfers.[299] The announcement came days after Williams suggested that he might not retire from film scoring as he had previously announced.[303][304] The film, Music by John Williams, premiered at the 2024 AFI Fest.
Upcoming and prospective projects
In May 2009, Spielberg bought the rights to the life story of Martin Luther King Jr., with the intention of being involved as both the producer and director.[305] The purchase was made from the King estate, led by son Dexter, while the two other surviving children, the Reverend Bernice and Martin III, immediately threatened to sue, not having given their approvals to the project.[306] In March 2013, Spielberg announced that he was developing a miniseries based on the life of Napoleon.[307] In May 2016, it was announced that Cary Joji Fukunaga was in talks to direct the miniseries for HBO, from a script by David Leland based on extensive research materials accumulated by Stanley Kubrick over the years.[308]
Spielberg was set to film an adaptation of David I. Kertzer's The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara in early 2017, for release at the end of that year,[309] but production was ultimately postponed. It was first announced in 2014, with Tony Kushner adapting the book for the screen.[310] Mark Rylance, in his fourth collaboration with Spielberg, was announced to star in the role of Pope Pius IX. Spielberg saw more than 2,000 children to play the role of the young Edgardo Mortara.[311] In 2015, it was announced that Spielberg was attached to direct an adaptation of American photojournalist Lynsey Addario's memoir It's What I Do, with Jennifer Lawrence in the lead role.[312] In April 2018, it was announced that Spielberg would direct a film adaptation of the Blackhawk comic book series. Warner Bros. would distribute the film with David Koepp writing the script.[313]
On June 21, 2021, it was announced that Amblin Entertainment signed a deal with Netflix to release multiple new feature films for the streaming service. Under the deal, Amblin is expected to produce at least two films a year for Netflix for an unspecified number of years.[314] In February 2022, Deadline Hollywood reported that Spielberg was developing an original film centered around the character Frank Bullitt, a fictional San Francisco police officer originally portrayed by Steve McQueen in the 1968 film Bullitt. The screenplay is set to be written by Josh Singer, who previously co-wrote The Post for Spielberg. McQueen's son Chad and granddaughter Molly will serve as executive producers.[315]Bradley Cooper was cast as Bullitt in November 2022 and will also serve as producer alongside Spielberg and Kristie Macosko Krieger.[316]
Spielberg first ventured into theatre producing in 1997, with his involvement on a production of The Diary of Anne Frank, as well as the original 1998 production of The Farnsworth Invention. In 2022, he made his Broadway producing debut as a co-producer on the musical A Strange Loop, for which he earned his first Tony Award for Best Musical. He went on to produce the stage musical adaptations of Water for Elephants and Death Becomes Her alongside his wife Kate Capshaw, both in 2024. He will next co-produce the upcoming stage adaptation of Smash, based on the 2012 NBCtelevision series of the same name, on which he served as an executive producer. It is set to begin performances in 2025.[326][327][328]
Filmmaking style and techniques
Influences
"I was self-taught. But I had great teachers, you know? All my influencers were the directors and the writers of the movies I was watching in theaters and on television. And my film school was really the cultural heritage of Hollywood and international filmmaking because there's no better teacher than Lubitsch or Hitchcock or Kurosawa or Kubrick, you know, or Ford or William Wyler or Billy Wilder or Clarence Brown – I mean, Val Lewton. I mean, those were my teachers."
Spielberg cites John Ford as a formative influence: "I try to rent a John Ford film… before I start every movie, simply because he inspires me.... He's like a classic painter, he celebrates the frame, not just what's inside it."[50] He names Frank Capra's It's A Wonderful Life (1946) as an influence on themes of "family, community and suburbia".[329] He enjoyed the work of Alfred Hitchcock,[45][330]David Lean,[331]Stanley Kubrick and John Frankenheimer.[332][333] In college, he was inspired by foreign films by Ingmar Bergman, Jacques Tati and François Truffaut.[334]Spencer Tracy has also influenced the characters of Spielberg's films,[335] as did The Twilight Zone.[67] He says Lawrence of Arabia is the film he's seen more times than any other.[336] Among his contemporaries, Spielberg was influenced by Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather: "I was pulverized by the story and the effect the film had on me... I also felt that I should quit, that there was no reason I should continue directing because I would never achieve that level of confidence and ability to tell a story."[337]
Method and themes
Spielberg often uses storyboards to visualize sequences, eschewing them for E.T. the Extraterrestrial and The Color Purple for a more spontaneous effect.[338][339] After filming Jaws, Spielberg learned to save special effects scenes until last and to exclude the media from filming locations.[340] Spielberg prefers to shoot quickly, with large amounts of coverage (from single-shot to multi-shot setups), so that he will have many options in the editing room.[341] From the beginning of his career, Spielberg's shooting style consisted of extreme high and low camera angles, long takes, and handheld cameras.[342] He favors wide-angle lens for creating depth,[343] and by the time he was making Minority Report, he was more confident with elaborate camera movements.[344]
In an interview with The Tech in 2015, Spielberg described how he chooses his film projects:
[Sometimes], a story speaks to me, even if it doesn't speak to any of my collaborators or any of my partners, who look at me and scratch their heads and say, "Gee, are you sure you wanna get into that trench for a year and a half?" I love people challenging me that way because it's a real test about my own convictions and [whether] I can be the standing man of my own life and take a stand on a subject that may not be popular, but that I would be proud to add to the body of my work. That's pretty much the litmus test that gets me to say, "Yeah, I'll direct that one."[345]
Spielberg's films contain many recurrent themes. One of the most pertinent revolves around "ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances."[332][346] The ordinary people often have limitations, but they succeed in becoming a "hero".[346] A consistent theme in his family-friendly work is a childlike sense of wonder and faith, and "the goodness in humanity will prevail."[346] He has also explored the importance of childhood, loss of innocence, and the need for parental figures.[347] In exploring the parent-child relationship, there is usually a flawed or irresponsible father figure. This theme personally resonates with Spielberg's childhood.[348] Exploring extraterrestrial life is another aspect to his work. Spielberg described himself as like an "alien" during childhood,[349] and this interest came from his father, a science fiction fan.[350]
Janusz Kamiński has served as a cinematographer on dozens of Spielberg's films.[358] Kamiński's first collaboration with Spielberg started with the holocaust drama film Schindler's List (1993) for which Kamiński received the Academy Award for Best Cinematography. The film used black-and-white cinematography. As Spielberg's career evolved from action to drama films, he and Kamiński adopted more handheld camerawork, as evidenced in Schindler's List and Amistad.[359] Kamiński would later receive his second Academy Award for cinematography on Saving Private Ryan.[360] The film's opening sequence to re-enact the invasion of Normandy was praised for realism. Kamiński garnered three more Academy Award nominations for his work on War Horse (2011), the historical epic Lincoln (2015), and West Side Story (2021).[361][362]
Spielberg's long-time partnership with composer John Williams began with The Sugarland Express (1974)[363] Williams would return to compose all but five of Spielberg's feature films (the exceptions are Twilight Zone: The Movie, The Color Purple, Bridge of Spies, Ready Player One and West Side Story). Williams won three of his five Academy Awards for Best Original Score for his work on Spielberg's films, which were Jaws (1975), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), and Schindler's List (1993). While making Schindler's List, Spielberg approached Williams about composing the score. After seeing a rough, unedited cut, Williams was impressed, and said that composing would be too challenging. He said to Spielberg, "You need a better composer than I am for this film." Spielberg responded, "I know. But they're all dead!"[364] In 2016, Spielberg presented Williams with the 44th AFI Life Achievement Award, the first to be awarded to a composer.[365]The Fabelmans (2022) was Williams's 29th collaboration with Spielberg.[366]
Personal life
Spielberg met actress Amy Irving in 1976 when she auditioned for Close Encounters of the Third Kind. After meeting her, Spielberg told his co-producer Julia Phillips, "I met a real heartbreaker last night."[367] Although she was too young for the role, she and Spielberg began dating and she eventually moved into what she described as his "bachelor funky" house.[368] They broke up in 1979.[110] In 1984, they renewed their romance and married in November 1985. Their son, Max, had been born on June 13 of that year.[369] In 1989, the couple divorced; they agreed to live near each other to share custody of their son.[132] Their divorce settlement is one of the most expensive in history.[370][110]
Spielberg met actress Kate Capshaw when he cast her in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. They married on October 12, 1991; Capshaw converted to Judaism before their marriage.[371][372] Spielberg said he rediscovered "the honor of being a Jew" when they married.[373] He said, "Kate is Protestant and she insisted on converting to Judaism. She spent a year studying, did the "mikveh", the whole thing. She chose to do a full conversion before we were married in 1991, and she married me after becoming a Jew. I think that, more than anything else, brought me back to Judaism."[373] He credits her for the family's level of observance;[374] "This shiksa goddess has made me a better Jew than my own parents", he said.[375] He and his family live in Pacific Palisades, California[376] and East Hampton, New York.[377]
In 1997, a man named Jonathan Norman stalked Spielberg and attempted to enter his home; Norman was jailed for 25 years.[385][386] In 2001, Spielberg was stalked by conspiracy theorist and former social worker Diana Napolis. She accused him and actress Jennifer Love Hewitt, of installing a mind-control device in her brain, and being part of a satanic cult.[387] Napolis was committed to a mental institution, and pled guilty to stalking. She was released on probation with a condition that she have no contact with either Spielberg or Hewitt.[388][389]
Spielberg was diagnosed with dyslexia at age 60.[390]
In 2013, Spielberg purchased the 282-foot (86 m) mega-yacht The Seven Seas for US$182 million. He has put it up for sale and has made it available for charter. At US$1.2 million per month, it is one of the most expensive charters on the market. The Canadian steel mogul Barry Zekelman bought it for US$150 millions and rechristened the ship Man of Steel.[391] Thereafter, Spielberg ordered a new 358-foot (109 m) Seven Seas.[392]
In 2022, at age 75, Spielberg was diagnosed with COVID-19 but recovered.[393]
In December 2022, Spielberg was a guest on Desert Island Discs for BBC Radio 4, choosing for his luxury item an H-8 Bolex Camera.[394]
Political views
Spielberg has usually supported US Democratic Party candidates. He has donated over $800,000 to the Democratic party and its nominees. He has been a close friend of former president Bill Clinton and worked with the president for the USA Millennium celebrations. He directed an 18-minute film for the project, scored by John Williams and entitled The American Journey. It was shown at America's Millennium Gala on December 31, 1999, in the National Mall at the Reflecting Pool at the base of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.[395] Spielberg endorsed Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election; he donated $1 million to Priorities USA Action.[396]
Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen escorts Spielberg through a military honor cordon into the Pentagon in 1999
In February 2008, Spielberg resigned as advisor to the 2008 Summer Olympics in response to the Chinese government's inaction over the War in Darfur.[402] Spielberg said in a statement, "I find that my conscience will not allow me to continue business as usual [...] Sudan's government bears the bulk of the responsibility for these on-going crimes, but the international community, and particularly China, should be doing more."[403] The International Olympic Committee (IOC) respected Spielberg's decision but IOC president Jacques Rogge expressed disappointment: "[Spielberg] certainly would have brought a lot to the opening ceremony in terms of creativity."[404] Chinese state media called Spielberg's comments "unfair".[405]
In September 2008, Spielberg and his wife offered their support to same-sex marriage in California by issuing a statement following their donation of $100,000 to the "No on Proposition 8" campaign fund, a figure equal to the amount of money Brad Pitt donated to the same campaign less than a week prior.[406] In 2018, Spielberg and his wife donated $500,000 to the March for Our Lives student demonstration in favor of gun control in the United States.[407]
In December 2023, after the Hamas-led attack on Israel, the Shoah Foundation which was founded by Spielberg, said that it had gathered over 100 video testimonies of those who experienced the attacks on that day to add them to the collection of "Holocaust survivor and witness testimony."[408] Speaking of the attacks he said, "I never imagined I would see such unspeakable barbarity against Jews in my lifetime" and that the Shoah Foundation project will ensure "that their stories would be recorded and shared in the effort to preserve history and to work toward a world without antisemitism or hate of any kind."[409]
Spielberg receiving a public service award presented by US Secretary of Defense William Cohen, 1999
Spielberg has won three Academy Awards. He received nine nominations for Best Director, and won twice (for Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan).[410][411] His third was in Best Picture, for Schindler's List.[152] He is the only director to receive a Best Director nomination from the academy in 6 different decades. In 1987, he was awarded the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award for his work as a creative producer.[412] Drawing from his own experiences in Scouting, Spielberg helped the Boy Scouts of America develop a merit badge in cinematography to promote filmmaking as a marketable skill; the badge was launched at the 1989 National Scout Jamboree.[413] In 1989, Spielberg was presented with the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award.[414] Spielberg received the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1995.[415]
A figure of the New Hollywood era,[442] Spielberg is widely regarded as one of the most influential and commercially successful film directors of all time. Some of his films were in the top ten highest-grossing films of the 1970s and 1980s, with Jaws, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Jurassic Park all becoming the highest-grossing film ever at the time of their respective releases.[429][443][444] In 1996, Life magazine named Spielberg the most influential person of his generation.[445] In 2003, Premiere magazine ranked him first place in the list of 100 Most Powerful People in Movies.[429] In 2005, Empire magazine ranked him number one on a list of the greatest film directors of all time.[446] In 2013, Time magazine listed him as one of the 100 most influential people.[447] According to Forbes' magazine of Most Influential Celebrities of 2014, Spielberg was ranked at first place.[448][449][450] As of December 2022, Forbes estimates his net worth at $4billion.[451]
Critics of Spielberg have argued that his films are commonly sentimental and moralistic.[487][488][485] In Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, Peter Biskind wrote that Spielberg is "infantilizing the audience, reconstituting the spectator as child, then overwhelming him and her with sound and spectacle, obliterating irony, aesthetic self-consciousness, and critical reflection".[489] Critic Ray Carney and actor Crispin Glover opined that Spielberg's works lack depth and do not take risks.[490][491] Filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard opined that Spielberg was partly responsible for the lack of artistic merit in mainstream cinema, and accused Spielberg of using Schindler's List to profit from a tragedy.[492] In defense of Spielberg, critic Roger Ebert said "Has Godard or any other director living or dead done more than Spielberg, with his Holocaust Project, to honor and preserve the memories of the survivors?"[493]
Seven of his films have been inducted into the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant": Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T., Jurassic Park, Schindler's List, and Saving Private Ryan.[3]
^Chandler, Charlotte (2008). Not the Girl Next Door: Joan Crawford, a Personal Biography (1st Simon & Schuster hardcover ed.). New York: Simon & Schuster. p. 262. ISBN978-1-4165-4751-8. OCLC166273792.
^Champlin, Charles (December 23, 1979). "Spielberg's Pearl Harbor". Los Angeles Times. pp. Part IV, p. 1. Archived from the original on April 11, 2023 – via Newspapers.com.
^ abCorliss, Richard (January 7, 1985). "This way to the children's crusade". Time. Archived from the original on October 19, 2009. Retrieved January 2, 2009. he wrote the story and served as an executive producer of The Goonies....
^The screenplay, adapted from Thomas Keneally's novel, was originally in the hands of fellow director Martin Scorsese, but Spielberg negotiated with Scorsese to trade scripts. (At the time, Spielberg held the script for a remake of Cape Fear.)
^Ebert, Roger (July 24, 1998). "Saving Private Ryan". The Chicago Sun-Times. Archived from the original on December 18, 2022. Retrieved November 23, 2023.
^Rosenbaum, Jonathan (July 13, 2001). "The Best of Both Worlds". The Chicago Reader. Archived from the original on November 23, 2023. Retrieved November 23, 2023.
^Prince, Ron (April 29, 2018). "Janusz Kaminski ASC / The Post". British Cinematographer. Archived from the original on January 1, 2021. Retrieved December 24, 2020.
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