Steven Spielberg

The most successful motion picture director of all time, Steven Spielberg first made his name as a master showman of adventure and fantasy, with blockbusters like Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark and ET: The Extraterrestrial. He entered a new phase in his career with The Color Purple, turning to literary and historic subjects, including some of the darkest chapters in human history. His wrenching drama of the Holocaust, Schindler's List, has become a landmark of world cinema. His research on the film led him to found the Shoah Foundation. To date, the Foundation has preserved the recollections of more than 50,000 Holocaust survivors whose testimony might otherwise have been lost to history. Steven Spielberg has continued to produce films at a prodigious pace, including his staggering recreation of D-Day, Saving Private Ryan. Extravaganzas like Jurassic Park and War of the Worlds proved he has not lost his touch with fantasy and science fiction, while his 2006 film Munich explores the challenge terrorism poses to civilization. His latest works find Spielberg in full command of his artistic powers, informed by a moral vision and human insight that grow deeper with the years. Here he tells the Academy of Achievement how he first fell in love with the power of the moving image. Spielberg continues to produce and direct motion pictures. He and his wife Kate Capshaw are parents, step-parents and adoptive parents to nine children.