'''Steven Allan Spielberg''', KBE (born December 18, 1946) is an Academy Award-winning American film director. He is the most financially successful motion picture director of all time. He has directed and/or produced a number of major box office hits, giving him great influence in Hollywood. As of 2004, he has been listed in ''Premiere'' and other magazines as the most "powerful" and "influential" figure in the motion picture industry, and at the end of the 20th century ''LIFE'' named him the most influential person of his generation. http://www.life.com/Life/boomers/50boomers01.html#05.
He has won four Academy Awards (including an Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award). He has been nominated for six Academy Awards for Best Director, winning two of them (''
Schindler's List'' and ''
Saving Private Ryan''), and seven of the films he directed were up for the Best Picture Oscar (''
Schindler's List'' won).
While his films have been derided as the archetype of modern Hollywood blockbuster film-making (commercialism over artistic purposes) by some of his critics he ranks among the most successful filmmakers in history, in terms of both critical acclaim and popular success. First coming to attention directing adventure films, in later years he started to tackle emotionally powerful issues, such as the Holocaust, slavery, war, and terrorism.
Childhood and early career
Steven Spielberg was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and later raised in Camden, New Jersey, Haddon Township, New Jersey, Phoenix, Arizona, Los Gatos, California and Saratoga, California. His last name comes from the name of the Austrian city where his Hungarian Jewish ancestors lived in 17th century: Spielberg. He is a contemporary of filmmakers George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, John Milius, and Brian De Palma. Spielberg grew up making movies. He was making amateur 8 mm "adventure" movies with his friends as a teenager, and he made his first short film for theatrical release, ''Amblin''', in 1968, at the age of twenty one. (Spielberg's own production company, Amblin Entertainment, was named after this short film.)
He attended Arcadia High School in Phoenix, Arizona and subsequently graduated from Saratoga High School in Saratoga, California in 1965. On attending Saratoga High School, he said that it was the "''worst experience''" of his life and "''hell on Earth''". http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/05.29.97/spielberg-9722.html.
Spielberg attended California State University: Long Beach, majoring in English, because Long Beach did not have a film school at that time. While attending college at Long Beach State in the 1960s, Spielberg was a member of Theta Chi Fraternity. He dropped out in 1969 to take a television director contract at Universal Studios. In 2002, thirty-five years after starting college, Spielberg finished his degree via
