Steven Speilberg –
Academy Award-winning director: Schindler's
List, The Color Purple, E.T.: The ExtraTerrestrial and Saving Private Ryan.
Co-founded the studio Dreamworks SKG, which was
purchased by Paramount Pictures in 2005.
Early Career
 Was 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
 Most commercially successful director of
all time.
Career Highlights
Film themes: Primeval fears,: Jaws (1975),
Childlike wonder: Close Encounters of the
Third Kind (1977) and ET (1982).
Literature: The Color Purple (1985)
and Empire of the Sun (1987). Adventures:
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and Indiana
Jones and the Temple of Doom(1984).
Imagination: Peter Pan, Hook(1991), Jurassic
Park (1993)
History: The Holocaust drama Schindler's
List (1993) - Spielberg’s first win as Best
Director.
In 1998 - World War II perspective of
American soldiers in Europe in Saving
Private Ryan (1998), which earned him
another Academy Award for Best Director.
Dreamworks Creation
Formed Dreamworks in 1994 - with Jeffrey
Katzenberg and David Geffen. (It was later
bought by Paramount Pictures in 2005.)
In 2001 he completed the science fiction
film AI: Artificial Intelligence, a project
begun by Stanley Kubrick.
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.
Herge - film version of War Horse (2011)
won him his most recent critical acclaim The movie received six Academy Award
nominations.
Awards and Honors
Along with his three Academy Award wins,
Spielberg has received many other honors:
Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award from
the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and
Sciences in 1986.
In 2004 - Directors Guild of America
Lifetime Achievement Award and the French
Legion of Honor in recognition of his work.
He was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall
of Fame in 2005.
The idea of the hupia in “Jurassic Park”
—the mythical Costa Rican ghosts that
kidnap children—are connected the
novel to the dinosaurs, implying that the
dinosaurs instinctively attack children.