Steven Spielberg Biography (4)

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Steven Spielberg has directed, produced, or executive produced eight of the thirty top-grossing films of all time, including Jurassic Park and E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. Among his myriad honors, he is a three-time Academy Award winner, earning two Oscars for Best Director and Best Picture for Schindler's List, and a third Oscar for Best Director for Saving Private Ryan. He has also received Academy Award nominations for Best Director for E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Spielberg's critically acclaimed World War II drama Saving Private Ryan, starring Tom Hanks, was the highest-grossing release (domestically) of 1998. The film also won five Oscars, including the one for Spielberg as Best Director, as well as two Golden Globe Awards for Best Picture (Drama) and Best Director. In addition, Spielberg was recognized by his peers with a Directors Guild of America (DGA) Award, and shared with the film's other producers in the Producers Guild of America (PGA) Award. That year, the PGA also presented Spielberg with the prestigious Milestone Award for his historic contribution to the motion picture industry.

Saving Private Ryan also won Best Picture honors from the New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Toronto, British and Broadcast Film Critics Associations, with the Los Angeles, Toronto and Broadcast Film Critics also naming Spielberg Best Director.

On the heels of Saving Private Ryan, Spielberg and Hanks executive produced the miniseries Band of Brothers for HBO and DreamWorks Television. Based on the book of the same name by the late Stephen Ambrose, the fact-based World War II project recently won both Emmy and Golden Globe Awards for Best Miniseries.

In 1994, Spielberg's internationally lauded Schindler's List was the year's most honored film, receiving a total of seven Oscars , including the aforementioned nods for Best Picture and Best Director. The film also collected Best Picture honors from many of the major critics organizations, in addition to seven BAFTA Awards, including two for Spielberg. He also won the Golden Globe Award and received his second DGA Award.

Spielberg won his first DGA Award for his work on The Color Purple and earned DGA Award nominations for E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Empire of the Sun, Jaws and Amistad. With nine in all, Spielberg has received more DGA Award nominations than any director in history, and, in 2000, he received the DGA's Lifetime Achievement Award. He is also the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute and the prestigious Irving G. Thalberg Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, Spielberg was raised in the suburbs of Haddonfield, New Jersey and Scottsdale, Arizona. He started making amateur films while still in his teens, later studying film at California State University, Long Beach. In 1969, his 22-minute short Amblin was shown at the Atlanta Film Festival, which led to a deal with Universal, making him the youngest director ever to be signed to a long-term deal with a major Hollywood studio.

Four years later, he directed the suspenseful telefilm Duel, which garnered both critical and audience attention. He made his feature film directorial debut on The Sugarland Express from a screenplay he co-wrote. His other earlier film credits as director include Always, Hook, and the Raiders of the Lost Ark sequels Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Spielberg's more recent films include the futuristic thriller Minority Report, starring Tom Cruise, and he also wrote, directed and produced A.I. Artificial Intelligence, which was realized from the vision of the late Stanley Kubrick. In 2000, Spielberg won the Stanley Kubrick Brittania Award for Excellence in Film, presented by BAFTA - Los Angeles.

In 1984, Spielberg formed his own production company, Amblin Entertainment. Under the Amblin banner, he has served as producer or executive producer on more than a dozen films, including such successes as Gremlins, The Goonies, Back to the Future I, II, and III, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, An American Tail, The Land Before Time, The Flintstones, Casper, Twister, The Mask of Zorro, Men in Black and Men in Black II. Amblin Entertainment also produces the hit series ER with Warner Bros. TV.

In October 1994, Spielberg partnered with Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen to form the new studio DreamWorks SKG. Since then, the studio's successes have included three consecutive Best Picture Oscars for American Beauty, Gladiator and A Beautiful Mind, the latter two in partnership with Universal.

Spielberg has also devoted his time and resources to many philanthropic causes. The impact of his experience making Schindler's List led him to establish the Righteous Persons Foundation using all his profits from the film. He also founded Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, which has recorded more than 50,000 Holocaust survivor testimonies. In addition, Spielberg executive produced The Last Days, the Shoah Foundation's third documentary, which won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. He is also the chairman of the Starbright Foundation, which combines the efforts of pediatric health care, technology and entertainment to empower seriously ill children.