Steven Spielberg
film director, screenwriter, producer, founder of the DreamWorks
born December 18, 1946
Steven Spielberg is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, and a movie magnate on the Forbes list of billionaires. Spielberg is considered one of the most prolific, popular, influential and high-grossing filmmakers in the history of Hollywood. He is also a co-founder of the DreamWorks movie studio. Spielberg won three Oscars for his groundbreaking works Schindler's List (1993) and Saving Private Ryan (1998), plus an Oscar as a lifetime achievement award.
Steven Spielberg – the billionaire director
Steven Allan Spielberg born in Cincinnati, Ohio, to a Jewish family. His mother, Leah Adler (née Posner), was a restaurateur and concert pianist, and his father, Arnold Spielberg was an electrical engineer involved in the development of computers.
Spielberg's ancestors, namely his grand-father Shmuel Spielberg and his grandmother Rebecca Chechnik, came to America from Sudilkov, a tiny town in the Kamenetsk-Podolskiy area (Russian Empire, now Ukraine), where they operated a small brewery. In 1906, after the disastrous start of the Russo-Japanese war, Shmuel escaped conscription by immigrating to America, and a few years later moved his whole family over to Indiana and later Ohio.
The famous director started his long and successful filmmaking career very early in the childhood, in the 50s, when he first started making 8-mm movies and showing them at his home for 25 cents (with his sister selling popcorn), and then making more-or-less professional movies for his Boy Scouts division, including his very first picture The Last Gunfight, which brought him his first $1 (one U.S. dollar) of net profit. And in 1963, at the age of only 16, he filmed his first independent movie Firelight, which would later inspire E.T.
In 1975 he achieved his first breakthrough with Jaws, which he saved from impending cancellation due to budget overruns by sheer stubbornness and determination - the picture was such a success, that soon he was invited to film a string of cult movies: Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, The Goonies etc. etc.
Several of his films films - Jaws (1975), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), and Jurassic Park (1993) - broke box office records of their time. Up to date, Spielberg's movies have earned more than $10 billion in box office sales (taking into account inflation), making their creator the wealthiest movie director in the world: Forbes puts his net worth at cca. $3 billion.
Spielberg's first marriage, to Amy Irving, and the subsequent divorce was as grand as his films: the separation became the third most expensive in history after a judge had controversially voided a prenup agreement written on a napkin and awarded Irving $100 million and parental rights to their only child Max. In 1991 Spielberg married actress Kate Capshaw, and is living with her and their six (!) children.
Sources:
"Steven Spielberg: A Biography (Third Edition)" - By Joseph McBride (2012)
"Steven Spielberg Biography" - Biography.com (January 31, 2011)
"Steven Spielberg: A Biography." - Da Capo Press (1999)
