Steven Allan Spielberg (born December 18, 1946) is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. A figure of the New Hollywood era, he is the most commercially successful director of all time. Spielberg is the recipient of various accolades, including three Academy Awards (including two Best Director wins), a Kennedy Center honor, a Cecil B. DeMille Award, and an AFI Life Achievement Award. Time magazine named him one of the 100 Most Important People of the Century in 2013.

Spielberg was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and grew up in Phoenix, Arizona. He later moved to California and studied film in college. After directing several episodes for television including Night Gallery and Columbo, he directed the television film Duel (1971) which gained him acclaim from critics and audiences. He then made his directorial film debut with The Sugarland Express (1974). The following year he became a household name directing 1975’s summer blockbuster Jaws. He then directed box office successes Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), and the Indiana Jones series. Spielberg later explored drama in The Color Purple (1985) and Empire of the Sun (1987).

After a brief hiatus, he directed two back-to-back hit movies with the science fiction thriller Jurassic Park and the Holocaust drama Schindler’s List (both 1993); the former became the highest-grossing film ever at the time, while the latter has been described as one of the greatest films ever made. In 1998, he directed the World War II epic Saving Private Ryan. Spielberg continued in the 2000s with science fiction, including A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), Minority Report (2002), and War of the Worlds (2005). He also directed the children’s adventure films The Adventures of Tintin (2011), The BFG (2016), and Ready Player One (2018), as well as the historical dramas Amistad (1997), Munich (2005), War Horse (2011), Lincoln (2012), Bridge of Spies (2015), The Post (2017), and the musical West Side Story (2021).

In addition, he co-founded Amblin Entertainment and DreamWorks, and has served as a producer for many television series and films. Spielberg is also known for his long time collaboration with composer John Williams, with whom he has worked for all but five of his feature films. Several of Spielberg’s works are among the highest-grossing films of all time. Nine of his films have been inducted into the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.