Steven Spielberg (1946- ), American film director of commercially successful films. Spielberg was born on December 18, 1946, in Cincinnati, Ohio. One of his early films, Amblin’ (1969), caught the attention of Universal Pictures, which hired him to direct for television. His first television feature film, Duel (1971), showed his ability to create suspense from everyday situations. His first theatrical film, Sugarland Express (1974), was followed by the highly successful Jaws (1975), adapted from the novel by Peter Benchley about a great white shark. Subsequent films include Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977); the action-adventure Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and its sequels Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008); E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), perhaps his most popular success; The Color Purple (1985), based on the novel by Alice Walker; Empire of the Sun (1987, also co-producer), based on the autobiographical novel by J. G. Ballard; and Hook (1991). In 1993, Spielberg’s Jurassic Park, based on the novel of the same name by Michael Crichton, set box-office records for revenue. The film, which featured spectacular special effects, with menacing dinosaurs that appeared to be real, led to a number of sequels, including The Lost World (1997), also directed by Spielberg. Later in 1993 he achieved his greatest critical success to date with the film Schindler’s List. Based on a harrowing experience of loss and survival during the Holocaust, and filmed largely in black-and-white, Schindler’s List earned Spielberg numerous critics’ awards. He won an Academy Award (Oscar) for Best Director (1993), and the film won an Academy Award for Best Picture (1993). As co-producer and at times writer, Spielberg was also involved in the filming of Poltergeist (1982), Back to the Future (1985), and Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988).

In 1994, with powerful Hollywood figures Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen, Spielberg formed a new studio, DreamWorks SKG, to produce his films. The first of these, Amistad (1997), based on the true story of the revolt by a group of slaves while en route from Africa to America, attempted to develop the same vein of socially and historically conscious film-making as Schindler’s List. Speilberg’s World War II film Saving Private Ryan (1998), whose stunning opening sequence graphically depicts the full horror of war as experienced by American troops in the Normandy landings, starred Tom Hanks as a soldier leading a mission to locate the Private Ryan of the title; it received five Academy Awards, including one for Spielberg as Best Director. In 2001 Spielberg wrote and directed A.I. Artificial Intelligence, a project originally conceived by Stanley Kubrick, based on Brian Aldiss's science-fiction story Super-Toys Last All Summer Long. He was also executive producer of the TV mini series Band of Brothers (2001), which told the true story of the paratroop unit Easy Company and its involvement in the D-Day landings and other key episodes of World War II.

Spielberg’s next directorial venture, Minority Report (2002), a science-fiction thriller in the Blade Runner mould, impressed critics with its dystopian vision of a society where civil liberties have been eroded in the interests of law and order. The film, based on a short story by Philip K. Dick, starred Tom Cruise as a Washington, D.C. cop and depicted a future where police have the foreknowledge and power to arrest murderers before a crime has been committed. In 2002 Spielberg also directed Catch Me If You Can, based on the life of serial conman Frank Abagnale Jr., and was executive producer of the science-fiction mini-series Taken.

Having directed Hanks in the drama The Terminal (2004), about an Eastern European immigrant who is forced to live in limbo in a US airport after a military coup in his homeland deprives him of his nationality, Spielberg returned to the science-fiction genre with War of the Worlds (2005), starring Tom Cruise, from the novel by H. G. Wells. Munich (2005) was Spielberg's dramatization of the Israeli state's deadly response to the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games by the Black September terrorist group. Also in 2005, DreamWorks SKG was sold to Paramount Pictures.