Early Life
Spielberg made amateur films as a teenager in Arizona and California and directed television before his first theatrical features.
Career
Jaws (1975) became a landmark summer blockbuster, followed by Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), the Indiana Jones films and Jurassic Park (1993). He won the Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture for Schindler's List (1993) and Best Director for Saving Private Ryan (1998). He co-founded DreamWorks in 1994.
Legacy
Spielberg founded the Shoah Foundation in 1994 to record testimonies of Holocaust survivors, and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015.
Sources and further reading
Last updated: 2026-09-24