Steven Spielberg – "The Great Storyteller"

The most commercially successful filmmaker in Hollywood history, Steven Spielberg was born December 18, 1946, in Cincinnati, OH. A lifelong cinema buff, he began directing his first short movies while still a child, later studying film at California State University and winning notice for his 1969 short feature Amblin'.

He first made his mark in television and Spielberg's first feature-length effort, 1971's Duel, a thriller, was widely acclaimed as one of the best movies ever made for television. The film proved so successful on the small screen that it later was the recipient of theatrical distribution throughout Europe, where it proved to be a major box-office hit.

Spielberg permanently graduated to feature films with 1974’s The Sugarland Express, about the adventures of a Texas outlaw couple striving to keep their family together by any means necessary. However, it was his next project, Jaws, which truly cemented his reputation as a rising star. The most successful film of 1975, this tale of a man-eating Great White shark was widely recognized as the picture which established the summer months as the film industry's most profitable period of the year, making a move toward big-budget blockbusters which concluded two years later with his friend George Lucas' Star Wars.

Spielberg's follow-up, 1977's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, was another staggering success, employing state-of-the-art special effects to document its story of contact with alien life. With the 1979 slapstick-war comedy 1941, Spielberg made his first major mistake, as the film performed miserably at the box office. However, he quickly regained his footing with 1980's Raiders of the Lost Ark. Produced by Lucas, the film was one of the biggest hits of the decade, later launching a pair of sequels as well as a short-lived television series.

However, it was Spielberg's next effort which truly claimed his position as the era's most popular filmmaker: 1982's E.T. the Extra Terrestrial, the touching tale of a boy who befriends an alien, was an instant classic, ultimately becoming one of the most commercially successful movies of all time.

After 1984's Raiders of the Lost Ark sequel, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Spielberg went a different direction and directed The Color Purple, an adaptation of a novel exploring the lives and struggles of a group of African-American women during the Depression years. The film went on to make over $100 million at the box office, and received 11 Academy Award nominations. On Oscar night, however, it won nothing; a shutout said to be the cause of the industry’s resentment over Spielberg's staggering success.

A 1987 dramatization of the novel Empire of the Sun was his next picture, and was one of his few box-office disappointments. He also failed with Always, a remake of a war drama, but Spielberg returned with 1989's Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. With 1991's 60-million-dollar production of Hook, Spielberg again fell victim to negative reviews and disappointing box-office results, but in 1993 he returned with a vengeance with Jurassic Park, a special-effects extravaganza which ranked among the most aggressively marketed films of all time. The result was a global blockbuster of mammoth proportion, with receipts coming in at over one billion dollars.

The same year, he released Schindler's List, an epic docudrama set during the Holocaust. Again, he got a number of Oscar nominations and this time was rewarded for his accomplishments winning seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. Spielberg spent much of the mid-'90s behind the scenes, serving as executive producer on films such as Twister (1996), Men in Black (1997), and two 1998 films, Deep Impact and The Mask of Zorro. He returned to the director's chair with the 1997 smash The Lost World, the sequel to Jurassic Park. The same year, he was rewarded with several Oscar and Golden Globe nominations for Amistad, a slavery epic in which he was both director and producer. Whatever disappointment Spielberg may have felt over not actually winning any of the above awards was most likely forgotten the following year with Saving Private Ryan. The World War II epic, which Spielberg both directed and produced, won five Oscars, including Best Director.

Spielberg took another shot at summer blockbuster success with the sci-fi drama A.I.. featuring Oscar nominated child actor Haley Joel Osment in the role of a robot boy who longs to be human. However, although critics and audiences seemed intrigued by the ideas presented in the film, its unconventional pacing and execution ultimately prevented the film from becoming the classic that it may have had it been. The following year, however, would find Spielberg once again coming out on top with two remarkably upbeat chase films. Adapted from a short story and starring Tom Cruise as a the head of an elite "pre-crime division" of police officers who use a trio of psychics to predicts criminals' crimes so that they can be arrested before they have a chance to commit them, Minority Report proved to be an exhilarating sci-fi action epic. Six-months later, Spielberg's fast-paced crime adventure Catch Me If You Can adapted the real life exploits of legendary con artist Frank Abagnale, Jr. With Leonardo DiCaprio starring as Abagnale and Tom Hanks as the FBI agent who remains on the trail of the scammer, the film, combined with the success of Minority Report, proved that it would be some time before Spielberg gave up his reigns as a master blockbuster filmmaker. Money and fame do not appear to take precedence in Spielberg's world despite his three Oscars and the billions of dollars his films have made. Rather an interest in science fiction, a need for adventure and an urge to break all the rules seem to drive him. Spielberg is inspired by his childhood experiences and memories and says, "I still have pretty much the same fears I had growing up". "I've carried them with me right through my life until now. And I'm not sure I want to give those up because I think a lot of those insecurities are fuel for the stories that I tell."