Steven Spielberg

He was voted the 11th Greatest Director of all time by Entertainment Weekly.

He ranked #1 in Premiere's 2003 annual Hollywood Power List. It is the third time he received the top ranking (the others being in 1994 & 1995). He had ranked #6 in 2002.

On May 31, 2002, graduated from California State University Long Beach with a bachelor's degree in film and electronic arts. He had dropped out of college in 1968 to concentrate on his career, but during the 2000s fulfilled his remaining graduation requirements via independent projects, which required correspondence courses and several term papers. For Spielberg, the school waived its requirement that all senior film majors must submit a completed 12-minute short film, accepting Schindler's List (1993) in its place. He donned cap and gown and marched in the commencement ceremony with his fellow graduates.

Spielberg produced a series of films, including Evolution (2001), The Haunting (1999) and Shrek (2001).

In 2001, he produced a mini-series about World War Two that definitely *was* a financial and critical success: Band of Brothers (2001), a tale of an infantry company from its parachuting into France during the invasion to the Battle of the Bulge. Also in that year, Spielberg was back in the director's chair for A. I.

Artificial Intelligence (2001), a movie with a message and a huge budget. It did reasonably at the box office and garnered varied reviews from critics. Spielberg has been extremely active in films there are many other things he has done as well. He produced the short-lived TV series SeaQuest 2032 (1993), an anthology series entitled Amazing Stories (1985), created the video-game series "Medal of Honor" set during World War Two, and was a starting producer of ER (1994). Spielberg, if you haven't noticed, has a great interest in World War Two.

In December 2000. he was awarded the honor of Knight of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) in New Years Honours 2001 by Queen Elizabeth II for his contribution to the British film industry. As a non-Commonwealth citizen, he will not be able to use the title.

In September 1999, he was named Best Director of the 20th Century in an Entertainment Weekly on-line poll, substantially beating out runners-up Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick.

As a producer, he was very active in the late 90s, responsible for such films as The Mask Of Zorro (1998), Men In Black (1997) and Deep Impact (1998). However, it was on the directing front that Spielberg was in top form.

The next year, however, produced what many believe was one of the best films of his career: Saving Private Ryan (1998), a film about World War Two that is spectacular in almost every respect.

It was stiffed at the Oscars, losing best picture to Shakespeare in Love (1998).

He directed and produced the epic Amistad (1997), a spectacular film that was shorted at the Oscars and in release due to the fact that its release date was moved around so much in late 1997.

He is a supporter of the Democratic Party. In 1996, he donated $100,000 to the Party. He also favored Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump in the 2016 Presidential Election.

In 1995, he was given the American Film Institute Life Achievement Award.

In 1993, Spielberg directed Jurassic Park (1993), which for a short time held the record as the highest grossing movie of all time, but did not have the universal appeal of his previous efforts. Big box-office spectacles were not his only concern, though.

He produced and directed Schindler's List (1993), a stirring film about the Holocaust. He won best director at the Oscars, and also got Best Picture. In the mid-90s, he helped found the production company DreamWorks, which was responsible for many box-office successes.

he also produced two sequels to Jurassic Park (1993), which were financially but not particularly critical successes.

Spielberg has also had an affinity for animation and has been a strong voice in animation in the 1990s.

Aside from producing the landmark "Who Framed Roger Rabbit", he produced the animated series Tiny Toon Adventures (1990), Animaniacs (1993), Pinky and the Brain (1995), Freakazoid! (1995), Pinky, Elmyra & the Brain (1998), Family Dog (1993) and Toonsylvania (1998).

Spielberg was very active in the early 1990s, as he directed Hook (1991) and produced such films as the cute fantasy Joe Versus the Volcano (1990) and An American Tail: Fievel Goes West (1991).

He also produced the unusual comedy thriller Arachnophobia (1990), Back to the Future Part III (1990) and Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990). While these movies were big successes in their own right, they did not quite bring in the kind of box office or critical acclaim as previous efforts.

The next year proved to be another big one for Spielberg, as he produced and directed Always (1989) as well as Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade (1989), and Back To The Future II (1989). All three of the films were box-office and critical successes.

Also, in 1989, he produced the little known comedy-drama Dad (1989), with Jack Lemmon and Ted Danson, which got mostly mixed results.

In 1988, he produced the landmark animation/live-action film Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988).

Spielberg also produced other cartoons such as The Land Before Time (1988), We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story (1993), Casper (1995) (the live action version) as well as the live-action version of The Flintstones (1994), where he was credited as "Steven Spielrock". Spielberg also produced many Roger Rabbit short cartoons, and many Pinky and the Brain, Animaniacs and Tiny Toons specials.

He also produced the cartoon An American Tail (1986), a quaint little animated classic.

His biggest effort as producer in 1985, however, was the blockbuster Back to the Future (1985), which made Michael J. Fox an instant superstar.

As director, Spielberg took on the book The Color Purple (1985), with Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey, with great success.

In 1984, Spielberg followed up "Raiders" with Indiana Jones and The Temple Of Doom (1984), which was a commercial success but did not receive the critical acclaim of its predecessor.

In 1983, he lost the Best Picture Oscar to Gandhi (1982), directed by Richard Attenborough. He later went on to direct six cast members, as well as Attenborough, in his later movies: Amrish Puri in Indiana Jones and The Temple Of Doom (1984); Roshan Seth in Indiana Jones and The Temple Of Doom (1984); Richard Attenborough in Jurassic Park (1993); Ben Kingsley in Schindler's List (1993), Nigel Hawthorne in Amistad (1997), Martin Sheen in Catch Me If You Can (2002), and Daniel Day-Lewis in Lincoln (2012).

- The Extra Terrestrial (1982).

Spielberg produced and directed two films in 1982.

The first was Poltergeist (1982), but the highest-grossing movie of all time up to that point was the alien story E. T.

- The Extra Terrestrial (1982). Spielberg also helped pioneer the practice of product placement. The concept, while not uncommon, was still relatively low-key when Spielberg raised the practice to almost an art form with his famous (or infamous) placement of Reese's Pieces in "E. T. " Spielberg was also one of the pioneers of the big-grossing special-effects movies, like "E. T. " and "Close Encounters", where a very strong emphasis on special effects was placed for the first time on such a huge scale.

Spielberg hit gold yet one more time with Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), with Harrison Ford taking the part of Indiana Jones.

As a producer, Spielberg took on many projects in the 1980s, such as The Goonies (1985), and was the brains behind the little monsters in Gremlins (1984).

In the latter half of the 1980s, he also directed Empire of the Sun (1987), a mixed success for the occasionally erratic Spielberg. Success would not escape him for long, though.

The late 1980s found Spielberg's projects at the center of pop-culture yet again.

In 1978, Spielberg produced his first film, the forgettable I Wanna Hold Your Hand (1978), and followed that effort with Used Cars (1980), a critically acclaimed, but mostly forgotten, Kurt Russell/Jack Warden comedy about devious used-car dealers.

His next film was the classic Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), a unique and original UFO story that remains a classic.

One of the most influential personalities in the history of cinema, Steven Spielberg is Hollywood's best known director and one of the wealthiest filmmakers in the world. He has an extraordinary number of commercially successful and critically acclaimed credits to his name, either as a director, producer or writer since launching the summer blockbuster with Jaws (1975), and he has done more to define popular film-making since the mid-1970s than anyone else.

It was his next effort, however, that made him an international superstar among directors: Jaws (1975). This classic shark attack tale started the tradition of the summer blockbuster or, at least, he was credited with starting the tradition.

Spielberg's first major directorial effort was The Sugarland Express (1974), with Goldie Hawn, a film that marked him as a rising star.

Spielberg had a unique and classic early directing project, Duel (1971), with Dennis Weaver.

In the early 1970s, Spielberg was working on TV, directing among others such series as Rod Serling's Night Gallery (1969), Marcus Welby, M. D.

(1969) and Columbo: Murder by the Book (1971). All of his work in television and short films, as well as his directing projects, were just a hint of the wellspring of talent that would dazzle audiences all over the world.

However, in 1968, he directed Amblin' (1968), which featured the desert prominently, and not the first of his movies in which the desert would feature so prominently. Amblin' also became the name of his production company, which turned out such classics as E. T.

In 1967, he directed Slipstream (1967), which was unfinished.

In 1964, he directed Firelight (1964), a movie about aliens invading a small town.

Among his early directing efforts were Battle Squad (1961), which combined World War II footage with footage of an airplane on the ground that he makes you believe is moving.

He also directed Escape to Nowhere (1961), which featured children as World War Two soldiers, including his sister Anne Spielberg, and The Last Gun (1959), a western. All of these were short films. The next couple of years, Spielberg directed a couple of movies that would portend his future career in movies.

He gained notoriety as an uncredited assistant editor on the classic western Wagon Train (1957).

Steven Allan Spielberg was born in 1946 in Cincinnati, Ohio, to Leah Frances (Posner), a concert pianist and restaurateur, and Arnold Spielberg, an electrical engineer who worked in computer development. His parents were both born to Russian Jewish immigrant families. Steven spent his younger years in Haddon Township, New Jersey, Phoenix, Arizona, and later Saratoga, California. He went to California State University Long Beach, but dropped out to pursue his entertainment career.

He has one of the original Rosebud sleds from Citizen Kane (1941) in his house.