Steven Spielberg
Is an American Director, producer and screen-writer
Birth Name: Steven Allan Spielberg

Born: December 18, 1946 (age 69), Cincinnati, Ohio, United States 

was an amateur filmmaker as a child. He went on to become the enormously successful and Academy Award-winning director of such films as Schindler's List, The Color Purple, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, Saving Private Ryan, Catch Me If You Can, Lincoln and Bridge of Spies. In 1994, he co-founded the studio Dreamworks SKG, which was purchased by Paramount Pictures in 2005.

Early Career:

An amateur filmmaker as a child, Spielberg moved several times growing up and spent part of his youth in Arizona. He became one of the youngest television directors for Universal in the late 1960s. A highly praised television film, Duel (1972), brought him the opportunity to direct for the cinema, and a long string of hits have made him the most commercially successful director of all time.

Cinematic Highlights:

Spielberg's films have explored primeval fears, as in Jaws (1975), or expressed childlike wonder at the marvels of this world and beyond, as in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and E.T. (1982). He has also tackled literary adaptations, such as The Color Purple (1985) and Empire of the Sun (1987).
He is continuing adventures of his daredevil hero Indiana Jones in such films as Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984). Imaginative fantasy is dominant in Spielberg's Peter Pan-inspired Hook (1991), while Jurassic Park (1993) and its sequel The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) rely on traditional action and monster-horror sequences. Is credited for starting the summer blockbuster tradition with 1975's first $100 million megahit, Tiburón (1975).

Spielberg is also known for his impressive historical films. The Holocaust drama Schindler's List (1993), starring Liam Neeson as a businessman who helps save Jewish citizens, won seven Academy Awards, including Spielberg’s first win as best director.

In 1998, he revisited World War II, this time from the perspective of American soldiers in Europe in Saving Private Ryan (1998), which earned him another Academy Award for best director. His first film company, Amblin Entertainment, which was founded in 1982, produced several other successful movies, notably Back to the Future (1985) and its two sequels, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988). As a producer, he was very active in the late 90s, responsible for such films as La máscara del Zorro (1998), Hombres de negro (1997) and Impacto profundo (1998). However, it was on the directing front that Spielberg was in top form. He directed and produced the epic Amistad (1997). Was a starting producer of ER Emergencias (1994). Spielberg, if you haven't noticed, has a great interest in World War Two. He and Tom Hanks collaborated on Shooting War (2000), a documentary about World War II combat photographers, and he produced a documentary about the Holocaust called A Holocaust szemei (2000).


DreamWorks and Sci-Fi adventures:

In 1994 Spielberg formed a new studio, Dreamworks SKG with Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen. (It was later bought by Paramount Pictures in 2005.) . He oompleted the science fiction with Artificial Intelligence, a project begun by Stanley Kubrick.  Films include another sci-fi adventure Minority Report (2002) and the Academy Award-nominated Munich (2005), and he worked  as producer for the Clint Eastwood-directed WWII films Flags of Our Fathers (2006) and Letters from Iwo Jima (2006).

Spielberg reunited with George Lucas for the latest installment of the Indiana Jones saga in 2008. Spielberg directed the film, which featured Harrison Ford reprising his role as the famed adventurer in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. 


Awards and Honors:

After with his tree Oscar winings,  Spielberg has received many other honors. He received the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1986. In 2004, Spielberg received the Directors Guild of America Lifetime Achievement Award and the French Legion of Honor in recognition of his work. The following year, he was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.

In November 2015, the iconic filmmaker was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor..

Personal Life:

Spielberg first met actress Amy Irving in 1976 at the suggestion of director Brian De Palma, who knew he was looking for an actress to play in Close Encounters. After meeting her, Spielberg told his co-producer Julia Phillips, "I met a real heartbreaker last night Although she was too young for the role, she and Spielberg began dating and she eventually moved in to what she described as his "bachelor funky" house. They lived together for four years, but the stresses of their professional careers took a toll on their relationship. Irving wanted to be certain that whatever success she attained as an actress would be her own: "I don't want to be known as Steven's girlfriend," she said, and chose not to be in any of his films during those years.
As a result, they broke up in 1979, but remained close friends. Then in 1984 they renewed their romance, and in November 1985, they married, already having had a son, Max Samuel. After three and a half years of marriage, however, many of the same competing stresses of their careers caused them to divorce in 1989. They agreed to maintain homes near each other as to facilitate the shared custody and parenting of their son. Their divorce was recorded as the third most costly celebrity divorce in history