Steven Spielberg Biography
Steven Spielberg Biography
Stephen Spielberg has directed some of the most popular, and highest grossing, movies of all time. He has directed six of the top 25 highest grossing movies of all time, and is clearly one of the most notable directors of our day. Stephen Spielberg was born on December 18th, 1947 in Cincinnati, Ohio. Stephen's family moved around a lot, and Stephen had troubles fitting in at school. His peers constantly picked him on for his physical weakness and his ethnic background. Stephen is Jewish, and in his childhood he attended predominately non-Jewish schools. (Reed/Cunneff 139) His father Arnold was a computer engineer, and his mother Leah was a restaurateur. Stephen was a practical joker, who constantly played tricks on his sisters. Stephen found his best mode of expression however, through an old eight-millimeter camera that he had found in his garage. Spielberg focused all of his time and effort into this new form of expression he had found, even at the expense of other things in his life. In an article in Time magazine Spielberg said "From age twelve or thirteen I knew I wanted to be a movie director, and I didn't think that science or math or foreign languages were going to help me turn out the little 8-mm sagas I was making to avoid homework."(Contemporary Authors 3) Movies were also helping Stephen to escape his family life, where at home things were bad with his parents, and when Stephen was twelve years old they divorced. This only helped to clarify Stephen's love of film.
After he completed high school, Spielberg was well on his way to becoming a director. He had already won student awards for some of his short films, and one of them, a movie called Firelight, had actually been shown in a local movie theatre. As a young high school graduate, Spielberg would often take tours to Universal Studios, and then sneak off for hours to tour the lot by himself. He did this almost every day after graduating from high school. (Contemporary Authors 3) At age twenty Spielberg was signed to a seven-year contract with Universal television after an executive of the company saw some of his films. Under this contract, Spielberg would direct Duel, his first TV movie, and his first movie to gain widespread critical attention. The TV film was even released as a feature film in some countries. Stephen...