Steven Spielberg - Biography, Achievements and Quotes

Steven Allan Spielberg (born December 18, 1946) is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as archetypes of modern Hollywood blockbuster filmmaking. 

In later years, his films began addressing humanistic issues such as the Holocaust, the Transatlantic slave trade, war, and terrorism. He is considered one of the most popular and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. He is also one of the co-founders of DreamWorks movie studio.

Spielberg won the Academy Award for Best Director for Schindler's List (1993) and Saving Private Ryan (1998). Three of Spielberg's films—Jaws (1975), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), and Jurassic Park (1993)—achieved box office records, each becoming the highest-grossing film made at the time. To date, the unadjusted gross of all Spielberg-directed films exceeds $8.5 billion worldwide. Forbes puts Spielberg's wealth at $3.2 billion.

Achievements & Facts about Steven Spielberg

• In 1958, he became a Boy Scout, and fulfilled a requirement for the photography merit badge by making a nine-minute 8 mm film entitled The Last Gunfight. Spielberg recalled years later to a magazine interviewer, "My dad's still-camera was broken, so I asked the scoutmaster if I could tell a story with my father's movie camera. He said yes, and I got an idea to do a Western. I made it and got my merit badge. That was how it all started."
•  At age thirteen, Spielberg won a prize for a 40-minute war film he titled Escape to Nowhere which was based on a battle in east Africa. 
• In 1963, at age sixteen, Spielberg wrote and directed his first independent film, a 140-minute science fiction adventure called Firelight (which would later inspire Close Encounters). 
• The film, which had a budget of US$500, was shown in his local cinema and generated a profit of $1. He also made several WWII films inspired by his father's war stories.
• After his parents divorced, he moved to Saratoga, California with his father. His three sisters and mother remained in Arizona. He attended Arcadia High School in Phoenix, Arizona for three years; Spielberg graduated from Saratoga High School in 1965. It was during this time Spielberg attained the rank of Eagle Scout.
• At age 12, he started making movies and by the time he left college he had at least eight amateur works to his credit.
• His short film Amblin’ (1968) came to the attention of Universal Pictures and signed him to a seven-year contract.
• Spielberg’s first full-length feature film is Sugarland Express in 1974.
• Was rejected by the prestigious USC School of Cinematic Arts before deciding to attend California State University in Long Beach.
• The film ”Jaws” catapulted Spielberg to stardom.
• He teamed up with writer-producer George Lucas in the 1980s to make the action-adventure Indiana Jones film series: Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989).
• As a child, Spielberg faced difficulty reconciling being an Orthodox Jew with the perception of him by other children he played with. "It isn't something I enjoy admitting," he once said, "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. 
• My grandfather always wore a long black coat, black hat and long white beard. I was embarrassed to invite my friends over to the house, because he might be in a corner davening [praying], and I wouldn't know how to explain this to my WASP friends." Spielberg also said he suffered from acts of anti-Semitic prejudice in his early life: he later said, "In high school, I got smacked and kicked around. Two bloody noses. It was horrible."
• Among the various alternate titles used before the movie became known by its simple two-letter moniker: Growing Up, After School, The Landing, Upon a Star, E.T. and Me, The Extra-Terrestrial and A Boy's Life.
• The movie premiered at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival, where it received a standing ovation and left many an attendee weepy, according to famed critic Roger Ebert. Spielberg also personally screened the movie for Ronald and Nancy Reagan at the White House in June 1982, the United Nations staff in September of that year and, in December 1982, Queen Elizabeth II.
• M&Ms were scheduled to star as the sweets Elliot uses to lure E.T. to his house, until Mars pulled the treats because execs feared E.T. was so ugly he would frighten children. Hershey's sales of Reese's Pieces immediately rose 65 percent after appearing in the film.
• E.T. was "played" by three models (all designed by Oscar winner Carlo Rambaldi, who had earlier designed an alien for Close Encounters): one that could walk around on its own, one that had electronic moving parts and could be used for close-ups and one that served as an E.T. suit for a small actor.
• Spielberg had considered more than 300 children for the role of Elliot but hired Thomas on the spot after the young actor, who had starred in just one feature--1981's Raggedy Man--wowed him with an emotional improvised performance of what would happen if the government were trying to take his dog away.
• His science-fiction fantasy E.T.—The Extra-Terrestrial, is one of the highest-grossing film ever made.
• His Amblin Entertainment  produced such films as Gremlins (1984), Back to the Future (1985), Young Sherlock Holmes (1985), *batteries not included (1987), Back to the Future II (1989), Arachnophobia (1990), Cape Fear (1991), and The Flintstones (1994).
• Spielberg also produced the animated features An American Tail (1986), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), An American Tail: Fievel Goes West (1991), and We're Back! A Dinosaur’s Story (1993).
• After Sidney Sheinberg, then the vice-president of production for Universal's TV arm, saw the film, Spielberg became the youngest director ever to be signed for a long-term deal with a major Hollywood studio (Universal). 
• He dropped out of Long Beach State in 1969 to take up the television director contract at Universal Studios and began his career as a professional director.[citation needed] In 1969, Variety announced that Spielberg would direct his first full length film, Malcolm Winkler, written by Claudia Salter, produced by John Orland, with Frank Price being the executive producer. 
• However, because of the difficulty in casting the key male role, the film was not made. Steven Spielberg also attended Brookdale Community College for undergrad.
• In 2007, Spielberg was diagnosed with dyslexia, which he disclosed five years later in an interview.
• Spielberg’s most important contribution to modern movies is his insight that there was an enormous audience to be created if old-style B-movie stories were made with Alevel craftsmanship and enhanced with the latest developments in special effects. 
• Consider such titles as Raiders of the Lost Ark and the other Indiana Jones movies, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E. T., and Jurassic Park. Look also at the films he produced but didn’t direct, like the Back to the Future series, Gremlins, Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Twister. 
• His Jurassic Park which was released in 1993 featured spectacular computer-created dinosaurs became one of top-grossing motion picture in history.
• His Schindler’s List won him an Academy Awards for best director and best picture. It was Spielberg’s first Academy Award for best director.
• Other outstanding films by Spielberg include Amistad (1997), the World War II film Saving Private Ryan (1998), Artificial Intelligence: AI (2001), Minority Report (2002), Catch Me If You Can (2002), The Terminal (2004), War of the Worlds (2005) and Munich (2005).
• He married actress Amy Irving in 1985 and divorced in 1989. In their divorce settlement, Amy received $100 million from Spielberg after a judge controversially vacated a prenuptial agreement written on a napkin.
• Irving and Spielberg’s divorce was recorded as the third most costly celebrity divorce in history.
• Forbes magazine places Spielberg’s personal net worth at $3.0 billion.
• In 2006, Premiere listed Spielberg as the most powerful and influential figure in the motion picture industry, Time listed him as one of the `100 Most Important People of the Century and Life named him the most influential person of his generation at the end of 20th century.
• “My dad took me out to see a meteor shower when I was a little kid,” he said, “and it was scary for me because he woke me up in the middle of the night. My heart was beating; I didn’t know what he wanted to do. He wouldn’t tell me, and he put me in the car and we went Off, and I saw all these people lying on blankets, looking up at the sky. And my dad spread out a blanket. 
• We lay down and looked at the sky, and I saw for the first time all these meteors. What scared me was being awakened in the middle of the night and taken somewhere without being told where. But what didn’t scare me, but was very soothing, was watching this cosmic meteor shower. And I think from that moment on, I never looked at the sky and thought it was a bad place.”
• There are two important elements there: the sense of wonder and hope, and the identification with a child’s point of view. Spielberg’s best characters are like elaborations of the heroes from old Boy’s Life serials, plucky kids who aren’t afraid to get in over their head. Even Oskar Schindler has something of that in his makeup – the boy’s delight in pulling off a daring scheme and getting away with it.
• Spielberg’s first important theatrical film was The Sugarland Express, made in 1974, a time when gifted auteurs like Scorsese, Altman, Coppola, De Palma, and Malick ruled Hollywood. Their god was Orson Welles, who made the masterpiece Citizen Kane entirely without studio interference, and they too wanted to make the Great American Movie. 
• But a year later, with Jaws, Spielberg changed the course of modern Hollywood history. Jaws was a hit of vast proportions, inspiring executives to go for the home run instead of the base hit. And it came out in the summer, a season the major studios had generally ceded to cheaper exploitation films. 
• Within a few years, the Jaws model would inspire an industry in which budgets ran wild because the rewards seemed limitless, in which summer actionpictures dominated the industry, and in which the hottest young directors wanted to make the Great American Blockbuster.
• Spielberg can’t be blamed for that seismic shift in the industry. Jaws only happened to inaugurate it. If the shark had sunk for good (as it threatened to during the troubled filming), another picture would have ushered in the age of the movie bestsellers – maybe Star Wars, in 1977. 
• And no one is more aware than Spielberg of his own weaknesses. When I asked him once to make the case against his films, he grinned and startedthe list: “They say, ‘Oh, he cuts too fast; his edits are too quick; he uses wideangle lenses; he doesn’t photograph women very well; he’s tricky; he likes to dig a hole in the ground and put the camera in the hole and shoot up at people; he’s too gimmicky; he’s more in love with the camera than he is with the story.”
• All true. But you could make a longer list of his strengths, including his direct line to our subconscious. Spielberg has always maintained obsessivequality control, and when his films work, they work on every level that a film can reach. 
• I remember seeing E.T. at the Cannes Film Festival, where it played before the most sophisticated filmgoers in the world and reduced them to tears and cheers.

Superb Quotes by Steven Spielberg

• I`d rather direct than produce. Any day. And twice on Sunday.
• I dream for a living.
• I think every film I make that puts characters in jeopardy is me purging my own fears, sadly only to re-engage with them shortly after the release of the picture. I`ll never make enough films to purge them all.
• I interpret my dreams one way and make a movie out of them and people see my movies and make them part of their dreams.
• The older I get, the more I look at movies as a moving miracle.
• Every time I go to a movie, it`s magic, no matter what the movie`s about.
• I would love to see the British film industry get back on its feet again.
• “She wanted to go over and hug his tears away, but she was too frightened.”
• “I don't dream at night, I dream at day, I dream all day; I'm dreaming for living.”
• The love we do not show here on Earth is the only thing that hurts us in the after-life.
• There is a fine line between censorship and good taste and moral responsibility.
• Why pay a dollar for a bookmark? Why not use the dollar for a bookmark?
• When war comes, two things happen - profits go way, way up and all perishables go way, way down. There becomes a market for them.
• Naturally, it is a terrible, despicable crime when, as in Munich, people are taken hostage, people are killed. But probing the motives of those responsible and showing that they are also individuals with families and have their own story does not excuse what they did.
• I`ll probably never win an Oscar, but I`ll sure have a lot of fun! I really believe that movies are the great escape!
• When I grow up, I still want to be a director.
• he sky falls on my head, I come to and I see another movie I want to make.
• I don't drink coffee. I've never had a cup of coffee in my entire life. That's something you probably don't know about me. I've hated the taste since I was a kid.
• I always like to think of the audience when I am directing. Because I am the audience.
• As long as there`s been Transformers, I`ve been one of the biggest fans. And I always thought that somewhere in this genius concept, there was a movie.
• You have many years ahead of you to create the dreams that we can`t even imagine dreaming. You have done more for the collective unconscious of this planet than you will ever know.
• All of us every single year, we`re a different person. I don`t think we`re the same person all our lives.
• A lot of the films I`ve made probably could have worked just as well 50 years ago, and that`s just because I have a lot of old-fashion values.
• I`ve taken the time to familiarize myself with the impressive field of Democratic candidates and am convinced that Hillary Clinton is the most qualified candidate to lead us from her first day in the White House. Hillary is a strong leader and is respected the world over. As president, she will bring America back together, rebuild our prestige abroad and ensure our protection here at home.