STEVEN SPIELBERG - Steven Spielberg, one of the industry’s most successful and influential filmmakers, is a principal partner of DreamWorks Studios. Formed in 2009, Spielberg and Stacey Snider lead the motion picture company in partnership with The Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group. Spielberg is also, collectively, the top-grossing director of all time, having helmed such blockbusters as “Jaws,” “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial,” the “Indiana Jones” franchise, and “Jurassic Park.” Among his myriad honors, he is a three-time Academy Award® winner. Spielberg took home his first two Oscars®, for Best Director and Best Picture, for the internationally lauded “Schindler’s List,” which received a total of seven Oscars®. The film was also named the Best Picture of 1993 by many of the major critics organizations, in addition to winning seven BAFTA Awards and three Golden Globe Awards, both including Best Picture and Director. Spielberg also won the Directors Guild of America (DGA) Award for his work on the film. Spielberg won his third Academy Award®, for Best Director, for the World War II drama “Saving Private Ryan,” which was the highest-grossing release (domestically) of 1998. It was also one of the year’s most honored films, earning four additional Oscars®, as well as two Golden Globe Awards, for Best Picture - Drama and Best Director, and numerous critics groups awards in the same categories. Spielberg also won another DGA Award, and shared a Producers Guild of America (PGA) Award with the film’s other producers. That same year, the PGA also presented Spielberg with the prestigious Milestone Award for his historic contribution to the motion picture industry. He has also earned Academy Award® nominations for Best Director for “Munich,” “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” and “Lincoln.” Additionally, he earned DGA Award nominations for those films, as well as “Jaws,” “The Color Purple,” “Empire of the Sun,” and “Amistad.” With eleven to date, Spielberg has been honored by his peers with more DGA Award nominations than any other director. In 2000, he received the DGA’s Lifetime Achievement Award. He is also the recipient of the Irving G. Thalberg Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Hollywood Foreign Press’s Cecil B. DeMille Award, the Kennedy Center Honor, and numerous other career tributes. In 2012, Spielberg directed Academy Award winner Daniel Day-Lewis in “Lincoln,” based in part on Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “Team of Rivals,” with a screenplay by Tony Kushner. The DreamWorks Pictures/Twentieth Century Fox film, in association with Participant Media, garnered 12 Academy Award nominations and has earned $275 million worldwide. The film won two Oscars, including Daniel Day-Lewis’ third Oscar for Best Actor playing the iconic 16th President, as well as Best Production Design. Before “Lincoln,” Spielberg directed the 3D animated film “The Adventures of Tintin,” winner of the Golden Globe for Best Animated Feature Film. He also directed “War Horse,” based on an award-winning novel, which was adapted into a major stage hit in London and New York, winning the Tony Award for Broadway’s Best Play. “War Horse” was nominated for six Academy Awards including Best Picture. In 2011, he also produced the box-office success “Super 8” directed by JJ Abrams and executive produced the third “Transformers” film directed by Michael Bay which has grossed over $1 billion at the worldwide box office. Spielberg’s career began with the 1968 short film “Amblin,” which led to him becoming the youngest director ever signed to a long-term studio deal. He directed episodes of such TV shows as “Night Gallery,” “Marcus Welby, M.D.” and “Columbo,” and gained special attention for his 1971 telefilm “Duel.” Three years later, he made his feature film directorial debut on “The Sugarland Express,” from a screenplay he co-wrote. His next film was “Jaws,” which was the first film to break the $100 million mark. In 1984, Spielberg formed his own production company, Amblin Entertainment. Under the Amblin banner, he served as producer or executive producer on such hits as “Gremlins,” “Goonies,” “Back to the Future I, II, and III,” “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?,” “An American Tail,” “Twister,” “The Mask of Zorro,” and the “Men in Black” films. In 1994, Spielberg partnered with Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen to form the original DreamWorks Studios. The studio enjoyed both critical and commercial successes, including three consecutive Best Picture Academy Award® winners: “American Beauty,” “Gladiator,” and “A Beautiful Mind.” In its history, DreamWorks has also produced or co-produced a wide range of features, including the “Transformers” blockbusters, Clint Eastwood’s World War II dramas “Flags of Our Fathers” and “Letters from Iwo Jima,” the latter earning a Best Picture Oscar® nomination, “Meet the Parents” and “Meet the Fockers,” and “The Ring,” to name only a few. Under the DreamWorks banner, Spielberg also directed such films as “War of the Worlds,” “Minority Report,” “Catch Me If You Can,” and “A.I. Artificial Intelligence.” Spielberg has not limited his success to the big screen. He was an executive producer on the long-running Emmy-winning TV drama “E.R.” produced by his Amblin Entertainment company and Warner Bros. Television for NBC. On the heels of their experience on “Saving Private Ryan,” he and Tom Hanks teamed to executive produce the 2001 HBO miniseries “Band of Brothers,” based on Stephen Ambrose’s book about a U.S. Army unit in Europe in World War II. Among its many awards, the project won both Emmy and Golden Globe Awards for Outstanding Miniseries. He and Hanks more recently reunited to executive produce the acclaimed 2010 HBO miniseries “The Pacific,” this time focusing on the Marines in WWII’s Pacific theatre. “The Pacific” won eight Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Miniseries. Among the shows Spielberg also executive produced were the Emmy-winning Sci-Fi Channel miniseries “Taken,” the TNT miniseries “Into the West,” the Showtime series “The United States of Tara,” and NBC’s “Smash.” He is currently an executive producer on TNT’s “Falling Skies” and CBS’ “Under the Dome,” based on the novel by Stephen King. Apart from his filmmaking work, Spielberg has also devoted his time and resources to many philanthropic causes. He established The Righteous Persons Foundation using all his profits from “Schindler’s List.” He also founded the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, which in 2006 became the USC Shoah Foundation - The Institute for Visual History and Education. The Institute has recorded more than 52,000 interviews with survivors and other witnesses of the Holocaust and other genocides and is dedicated to making the testimonies a compelling voice for education and action. Additionally, Spielberg is the Chairman Emeritus of the Starlight Children’s Foundation. Steven Spielberg Reflects on 20th Anniversary of Schindlers List Im finding that in many cases technology is becoming more of a vehicle of voyeurism than a vehicle for change, the director said. On March 1, 1993, Steven Spielberg began production on Schindlers List in Krakow, Poland. Twenty years later, the director reflected on the resonance of the Academy Award-winning drama and reiterated his commitment to preserving the memories of Holocaust survivors. Sometimes it seems as if there are still people immune to the notion of empathy, of compassion, Spielberg said at a news conference Wednesday in Pasadena. People who see disturbing images on media and on television, people who watch, lets say, a clip of random violence or discrimination or bullying on YouTube and stand silent. So many in the world refuse to bear witness and do something about it. And Im finding that in many cases technology is becoming more of a vehicle of voyeurism than a vehicle for change. Steven Spielberg: I was put on this earth to tell story of the Holocaust Steven Spielberg may be best known for some of the biggest blockbusters to ever hit the big screen, including Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, ET, Jurassic Park and the Indiana Jones franchise, but directing those iconic films isnt what he considers his true calling. As he recently explained to Maria Shriver during an interview for TODAY, its the work he launched after another one of his big screen hits, 1993s Schindlers List, thats come to mean the most to him. This is something that I was put on this earth to do — not just to make movies, but to tell this truth to people, especially young people, Spielberg said.
Posted on: Mon, 12 May 2014 06:46:05 +0000
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