Biography spielberg steven

American filmmaker (born 1946)

"Spielberg" redirects here. For other uses, see Spielberg (disambiguation).

Steven Allan Spielberg (; born December 18, 1946) is an American filmmaker. A major figure of the New Hollywood era and pioneer of the modern blockbuster, Spielberg is widely regarded as one of the greatest film directors of all time and is the most commercially successful director in film history.^[1] Among other accolades, he has received three Academy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards and two BAFTA Awards, as well as the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1995, the Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in 2001, the Kennedy Center Honor in 2006, the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2009 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015. Seven of his films have been inducted into the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant".^[2][3]

Spielberg was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and grew up in Phoenix, Arizona.^[4] He 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), his first full-length film which later received an international theatrical release. He made his theatrical debut with The Sugarland Express (1974) and became a household name with the summer blockbuster Jaws (1975). He directed more escapist box office successes with Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) and the original Indiana Jones trilogy (1981–89). He explored drama in The Color Purple (1985) and Empire of the Sun (1987).

In 1993, Spielberg directed back-to-back blockbuster hits with the science fiction thriller Jurassic Park, the highest-grossing film ever at the time, and the Holocaust drama Schindler's List, which has often been listed as one of the greatest films ever made. He won the Academy Award for Best Director for the latter and the World War II epic Saving Private Ryan (1998). Spielberg has since directed the science fiction films A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), Minority Report (2002), and War of the Worlds (2005); the historical dramas Amistad (1997), Munich (2005), War Horse (2011), Lincoln (2012), Bridge of Spies (2015) and The Post (2017); the comedy The Terminal (2004); the animated filmThe Adventures of Tintin (2011); the musical West Side Story (2021); and the semi-autobiographical drama The Fabelmans (2022).

Spielberg co-founded Amblin Entertainment and DreamWorks, and he has served as a producer for many successful films and television series, among them Poltergeist (1982), Gremlins (1984), Back to the Future (1985), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) and Band of Brothers (2001). He has had a long collaboration with the composer John Williams, with whom he has worked for all but five of his feature films.^[5][6] Several of Spielberg's works are considered among the greatest films in history, and some are among the highest-grossing films ever.^[7] In 2013, Time listed him as one of the 100 most influential people,^[8] and in 2023, Spielberg was the recipient of the first ever Time 100 Impact Award in the US.^[9]

Early life and background

Spielberg was born on December 18, 1946, in Cincinnati, Ohio. His mother, Leah (née Posner, later Adler),^[12] was a concert pianist and ran a kosher dairy restaurant,^[13] and his father, Arnold,^[14] was an electrical engineer involved in the development of computers. His immediate family were^[15]Reform Jewish/Orthodox Jewish. Spielberg's paternal grandparents were Jews from Ukraine;^[18][19] his grandmother Rebecca, maiden name Chechik, was from Sudylkiv, and his grandfather Shmuel Spielberg was from Kamianets-Podilskyi.^[20] Spielberg has three younger sisters: Anne, Sue, and Nancy. At their home in Cincinnati, his grandmother taught English to Holocaust survivors. They, in turn, taught him numbers:

One man in particular, I kept looking at his numbers–his number tattooed on his forearm ... he started – you know, when–during the dinner break, when everybody was eating and not learning, he would point to the numbers. And he would say, that is a two, and that is a four. And then he'd say, and this is a eight, and that's a one. And I'll never forget this. And he said, and that's a nine. And then he crooked his arm and inverted his arm and said, and see, it becomes a six. It's magic. And now it's a nine, and now it's a six, and now it's a nine and now it's a six. And that's really how I learned my numbers for the first time ... the irony of all that, and the gift of that lesson, never really dawned on me until I was much older.^[15]

In 1952, his family moved to Haddon Township, New Jersey, after his father was hired by RCA. Spielberg attended Hebrew school from 1953 to 1957, in classes taught by Rabbi Albert L. Lewis. In early 1957, the family moved to Phoenix, Arizona.^[25] Spielberg had a bar mitzvah ceremony when he was thirteen. His family was involved in the synagogue and had many Jewish friends. Of the Holocaust, he said that his parents "talked about it all the time, and so it was always on my mind." His father had lost between sixteen and twenty relatives in the Holocaust. Spielberg found it difficult accepting his heritage; he said: "It isn't something I enjoy admitting... but when I was seven, eight, nine years old, God forgive me, I was embarrassed because we were Orthodox Jews. I was embarrassed by the outward perception of my parents' Jewish practices. I was never really ashamed to be Jewish, but I was uneasy at times."^[29][30] Spielberg was the target of anti-Semitism: "In high school, I got smacked and kicked around. Two bloody noses. It was horrible."^[29][31] He gradually followed Judaism less during adolescence, after his family had moved to various neighborhoods and found themselves to be the only Jews.

He recalls his parents taking him to see Cecil B. DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth (1952). He had never seen a movie before, and thought they were taking him to the circus. He was terrified by the movie's train crash, and at age 12, he recreated it with his Lionel trains and filmed it. He recalls: "The trains went around and around, and after a while that got boring, and I had this eight-millimeter camera, and I staged a train wreck and filmed it. That was hard on the trains, but then I could cut the film lots of different ways and look at it over and over again." This was his first home movie.^[34] In 1958, he became a Boy Scout, eventually attaining the rank of Eagle Scout. He fulfilled a requirement for the photography merit badge by making a nine-minute 8 mmWestern, The Last Gunfight. Spielberg used his father's movie camera to make amateur features, and began taking the camera along on every Scout trip. At age 13, Spielberg made a 40-minute war film, Escape to Nowhere, with a cast of classmates. The film won first prize in a statewide competition. Throughout his early teens, and after entering high school, Spielberg made about fifteen to twenty 8 mm adventure films. He recalls that

my dad told me stories about World War II constantly... I knew, based on the stories my dad and his friends were telling about World War II, that there was no glory in war. And it was ugly, and it was cruel ... it was, you know, visually devastating. And so I thought, someday, if I ever do make a war movie for real, it's got to be something that tells the truth about what those experiences had been for those young 17-, 18-, 19-year-old boys storming Omaha Beach, let's say.^[15]

In Phoenix, Spielberg went to the local theater every Saturday. Formative films included Victor Fleming's Captains Courageous (1937), Walt Disney's Pinocchio and Fantasia (both 1940), Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon (1950) and The Seven Samurai (1954),^[45][46]Ishirō Honda's Godzilla, King of the Monsters! (1956),^[47][48]David Lean's Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) and Lawrence of Arabia (1962) ("the film that set me on my journey"), Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (1963) and Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove (1964) and 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) ("I'm still living off the adrenalin that... I experienced watching that film for the first time.")^[49] He attended Arcadia High School in 1961 for three years. In 1963, he wrote and directed a 140-minute science fiction film, Firelight, the basis of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Firelight, funded mainly by his father, was shown in a local theater for one evening and grossed $501 against its $500 budget.

After taking a tour bus to Universal Studios, a chance conversation with an executive led to Spielberg getting a three-day pass to the premises. On the fourth day, he walked up to the studio gates without a pass, and the security guard waved him in: "I basically spent the next two months at Universal Studios ... that was how I became an unofficial apprentice that summer."^[54][55] His family later moved to Saratoga, California, where he attended Saratoga High School. A year later, his parents divorced. Spielberg moved to Los Angeles to stay with his father, while his three sisters and mother remained in Saratoga. He recalls:

My parents split up when I was 15 or 16 years old, and I needed a special friend, and had to use my imagination to take me to places that felt good – that helped me move beyond the problems my parents were having, and that ended our family as a whole. And thinking about that time, I thought, an extraterrestrial character would be the perfect springboard to purge the pain of your parents' splitting up.^[34]

He recalls his mother had "a huge adventurous personality. We always saw her as Peter Pan, the kid who never wanted to grow up, and she sort of saw herself that way. I think my mom lived a lot of childhoods in her ninety-seven years."^[15] He was not interested in academics, aspiring only to be a filmmaker. He applied to the University of Southern California's film school but was turned down because of his mediocre grades. He then applied and enrolled at California State University, Long Beach, where he became a brother of Theta Chi Fraternity. In 1968, Universal gave Spielberg the opportunity to write and direct a short film for theatrical release, the 26-minute 35 mmAmblin'. Studio vice president Sidney Sheinberg was impressed and offered Spielberg a seven-year directing contract. A year later, he dropped out of college to begin directing television productions for Universal, making him the youngest director to be signed to a long-term plan with a major Hollywood studio.^[63] Spielberg returned to Long Beach in 2002, where he presented Schindler's List to complete his Bachelor of Arts in Film and Electronic Media.

He recalls a formative encounter with one of his favorite filmmakers, John Ford, who said: "So they tell me you want to be a picture maker. You see those paintings around the office?" Spielberg said he did. Ford pointed to a painting and asked, "Where's the horizon?" Spielberg said it was at the top. Ford asked him where it was in another painting. Spielberg said it was at the bottom. Ford said, "When you're able to distinguish the art of the horizon at the bottom of a frame or at the top of the frame, but not going right through the center of the frame, when you can appreciate why it's at the top and why it's at the bottom, you might make a pretty good picture maker."^[65]

Career

1969–1974: On the horizon

Spielberg made his professional debut with "Eyes", a segment of Night Gallery (1969) scripted by Rod Serling and starring Joan Crawford. Initially, there was skepticism from Crawford and studio executives regarding Spielberg's inexperience. Despite Spielberg's efforts to implement advanced camerawork techniques, studio executives demanded a more straightforward approach. His initial contributions received mixed responses, leading Spielberg to briefly step back from studio work. Crawford, reflecting on her collaboration with Spielberg, recognized his potential, noting his unique intuitive inspiration. She expressed her appreciation for Spielberg's talent in a note to him and also communicated her approval to Serling. Crawford's endorsement highlighted Spielberg's early recognition in Hollywood despite initial hesitations regarding his experience.^[68]

In the early 1970s, Spielberg unsuccessfully tried to raise financing for his own low-budget films. He co-wrote and directed teleplays for Marcus Welby, M.D., The Name of the Game, Columbo, Owen Marshall, Counselor at Law and The Psychiatrist. Although unsatisfied with his work, Spielberg used the opportunity to experiment with his techniques and learn about filmmaking. He earned good reviews and impressed producers; he was earning a steady income and relocated to Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles.

Impressed, Universal signed Spielberg to do four television films.^[71] The first was Duel (1971), adapted from Richard Matheson's short story of the same name, about a salesman (Dennis Weaver) being chased down a highway by a psychotic tanker truck driver.^[72] Impressed, executives decided to promote the film on television. Reviews were positive, and Universal asked Spielberg to shoot more scenes so that Duel could be released to international markets. "Deservedly so" writes David Thomson, "for it stands up as one of the medium's most compelling spirals of suspense. The ordinariness of the Dennis Weaver character and the monstrous malignance of the truck confront one another with a narrative assurance that never needs to remind us of the element of fable."^[74] More TV films followed: Something Evil (1972) and Savage (1973).

Spielberg made his theatrical debut with The Sugarland Express (1974), based on a true story about a married couple on the run, desperate to regain custody of their baby from foster parents. The film starred Goldie Hawn and William Atherton and marked the first of many collaborations with the composer John Williams.^[76] Although the film was awarded Best Screenplay at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival, it was not a commercial success, which Spielberg blamed on Universal's inconsistent marketing. The film opened in four hundred theaters in the US to positive reviews; Pauline Kael wrote "Spielberg uses his gifts in a very free-and-easy, American way—for humor, and for a physical response to action. He could be that rarity among directors, a born entertainer—perhaps a new generation's Howard Hawks."^[79]The Hollywood Reporter wrote that "a major new director is on the horizon."

1975–1980: Magician

Producers Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown took a chance with Spielberg, giving him the opportunity to direct Jaws (1975), a thriller based on Peter Benchley's bestseller. In it, a great white shark attacks beachgoers at a summer resort town, prompting police chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) to hunt it down with the help of a marine biologist (Richard Dreyfuss) and a veteran shark hunter (Robert Shaw). Jaws was the first movie shot on open ocean,^[81] so shooting proved difficult, especially when the mechanical shark malfunctioned. The shooting schedule overran by a hundred days, and Universal threatened to cancel production. Against expectations, Jaws was a success, setting the domestic box office record and making Spielberg a household name. It won Academy Awards for Best Film Editing (Verna Fields), Best Original Dramatic Score (John Williams) and Best Sound (Robert Hoyt, Roger Heman, Earl Madery and John Carter). Spielberg said the malfunctioning of the mechanical shark resulted in a better movie, as he had to find other ways to suggest the shark's presence. After seeing the unconventional camera techniques of Jaws, Alfred Hitchcock praised "young Spielberg" for thinking outside the visual dynamics of the theater: "He's the first one of us who doesn't see the proscenium arch".^[84]

After declining an offer to make Jaws 2, Spielberg and Dreyfuss reunited to work on a film about UFOs, Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). Spielberg used 65 mm film for the best picture quality, and a new live-action recording system so that the recordings could be duplicated later. He cast one of his favorite directors, François Truffaut, as the scientist Claude Lacombe and worked with special effects expert Douglas Trumbull. It marked the first of many collaborations between Spielberg and editor Michael Kahn.^[88] One of the rare films both written and directed by Spielberg, Close Encounters was very popular with filmgoers and won Academy Awards for Best Cinematography (Vilmos Zsigmond) and Best Sound Effects Editing (Frank Warner).^[90]Stanley Kauffmann wrote: "I saw Close Encounters at its first public showing in New York, and most of the audience stayed on and on to watch the credits crawl lengthily at the end. For one thing, under the credits the giant spaceship was returning to the stars. For another, they just didn’t want to leave this picture. For still another, they seemed to understand the importance of those many names to what they had just seen." Kauffmann placed it first on his list of the best American films from 1968 to 1977.^[91] Reviewing Close Encounters, Kael called Spielberg "a magician in the age of movies."^[92]

His next directorial work was 1941 (1979), an action-comedy written by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale about Californians preparing for a Japanese invasion after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Spielberg was self-conscious about doing comedy as he had no prior experience in the genre. Universal and Columbia agreed to co-finance the film. 1941 grossed more than $92.4 million worldwide upon release,^[94] but most critics, and the studio heads, disliked it.Charles Champlin described 1941 as "the most conspicuous waste since the last major oil spill, which it somewhat resembles."^[95]

1981–1992: Impresario

Spielberg directed Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), with a screenplay by Lawrence Kasdan based on a story by George Lucas and Philip Kaufman. They considered it an homage to the serials of the 1930s and 1940s. It starred Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones and Karen Allen as Marion Ravenwood. Filmed in La Rochelle, Hawaii, Tunisia and Elstree Studios, England, the shoot was difficult but Spielberg said that it helped him hone his business acumen. The film was a box office success and won Academy Awards for Best Art Direction (Norman Reynolds, Leslie Dilley and Michael D. Ford); Best Film Editing (Michael Kahn); Best Sound (Bill Varney, Steve Maslow, Gregg Landaker and Roy Charman); Best Sound Editing (Ben Burtt and Richard L. Anderson); and Best Visual Effects (Richard Edlund, Kit West, Bruce Nicholson and Joe Johnston).^[99]Roger Ebert wrote: "Raiders of the Lost Ark is an out-of-body experience, a movie of glorious imagination and breakneck speed that grabs you in the first shot, hurtles you through a series of incredible adventures, and deposits you back in reality two hours later–breathless, dizzy, wrung-out, and with a silly grin on your face".^[100]Raiders was the first film in the Indiana Jones franchise.

Spielberg returned to science fiction with E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982). It tells the story of Elliot (Henry Thomas), a young boy who befriends an alien who was accidentally left behind by his companions and is attempting to return home. Spielberg eschewed storyboards so that his direction would be more spontaneous, and shot roughly in sequence so that the actors' performances would be authentic as they bonded with and said goodbye to E.T.Richard Corliss wrote, "This was the closing-night attraction at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival, a venue not known for blubbering sentiment. At the end, as the little critter bade his farewells and the Jules Verne-like space ship left the ground, the audience similarly levitated. One heard the audience's childlike applause; one felt their spirits lift. This was rapture made audible, palpable ... Spielberg orchestrated the movements of the camera and the puppet spaceman with the feelings of—it has to be called love—expressed in young Henry Thomas' yearning face. E.T. was the first film character to be a finalist in TIME’s Man of the Year sweepstakes. It would have been fine with me if the little creature, this lovely film, had won."^[101]

A special screening was organized for Ronald and Nancy Reagan, who were emotional by the end.E.T. grossed $700 million worldwide. It won four Academy Awards: Best Original Score (John Williams), Best Sound (Robert Knudson, Robert Glass, Don Digirolamo and Gene Cantamessa), Best Sound Editing (Charles L. Campbell and Ben Burtt) and Best Visual Effects (Carlo Rambaldi, Dennis Muren and Kenneth F. Smith).^[103] Kael wrote of E.T., "His voice is ancient and otherworldly but friendly, humorous. And this scaly, wrinkled little man with huge, wide-apart, soulful eyes and a jack-in-the-box neck has been so fully created that he's a friend to us, too; when he speaks of his longing to go home the audience becomes as mournful as Elliot. Spielberg has earned the tears that some people in the audience—and not just children—shed. Genuinely entrancing movies are almost as rare as extraterrestrial visitors."^[104] Spielberg co-wrote and produced Poltergeist (Tobe Hooper, 1982), released the same summer as E.T. With John Landis, he co-produced the anthology film Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983), contributing the "Kick the Can" segment.^[105]

His next feature film was the Raiders of the Lost ArkprequelIndiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984). Working again with Lucas and Ford, the film was shot in the United States, Sri Lanka and China. The film was darker than its predecessor, and led to the creation of the PG-13 rating because some content was deemed unsuitable for children under 13. Spielberg later said that he was unhappy with Temple of Doom because it lacked his "personal touches and love". Nonetheless, the film was a blockbuster hit,^[109] won the Academy Award for Best Special Effects and received mostly good reviews. Kael preferred it to the original, writing, "Spielberg is like a magician whose tricks are so daring they make you laugh. He creates an atmosphere of happy disbelief: the more breathtaking and exhilarating the stunts are the funnier they are. Nobody has ever fused thrills and laughter in quite the way that he does here. He starts off at full charge in the opening sequence and just keeps going". She conceded that it was less "sincere" than Raiders, adding "that's what is so good about it."^[110] On this project Spielberg met his future wife, Kate Capshaw, who played Willie Scott.^[111] Spielberg recalled, "The second film I could have done a lot better if there had been a different story. It was a good learning exercise for me to really throw myself into a black hole. I came out of the darkness of Temple Of Doom and I entered the light of the woman I was eventually going to marry and raise a family with."^[112]

Thomson writes that "At first sight, the Spielberg of the eighties may seem more an impresario—or a studio, even—then a director."^[74] Between 1984 and 1990, Spielberg served as producer or executive producer on nineteen feature films for his production company, Amblin Entertainment. Among them were Gremlins (Joe Dante, 1984), The Goonies (Richard Donner, 1985), Back to the Future (Robert Zemeckis, 1985), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (Zemeckis, 1988), Joe Versus the Volcano (John Patrick Shanley, 1990) and Arachnophobia (Frank Marshall, 1990).^[114] In the early 1980s, Spielberg befriended Warner Communications CEO Steve Ross eventually resulting in Spielberg making films for Warner Bros. It began with The Color Purple (1985), an adaptation of Alice Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, about a generation of empowered African-American women in the depression-era South. It was Spielberg's first film on a dramatic subject matter, and he expressed reservations about tackling the project: "It's the risk of being judged-and accused of not having the sensibility to do character studies." Starring Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey, the film was a box office hit and critics started to take note of Spielberg's foray into drama. Ebert named it the best film of the year.^[119] The film also received eleven Academy Award nominations, and Spielberg won Best Director from the Directors Guild of America. The film was produced and scored by Quincy Jones.

As China underwent economic reform and opened up to the American film industry, Spielberg made Empire of the Sun (1987), the first American film shot in Shanghai since the 1930s. It is an adaptation of J. G. Ballard's autobiographical novel about Jamie Graham (Christian Bale), a young boy who goes from being the son of a wealthy British family in Shanghai to a prisoner of war in a Japanese internment camp during World War II. David Lean was originally set to direct, with Spielberg producing. It was written by playwright Tom Stoppard and co-starred John Malkovich as an American expatriate. Critical reaction was mixed at the time of release; criticism ranged from the "overwrought" plot to Spielberg's downplaying of "disease and starvation". However, Andrew Sarris named it the best film of the year and later included it among the best of the decade.^[123] The film was nominated for six Academy Awards,^[124] but was a disappointment at the box office; Ian Alterman of The New York Times thought it was overlooked by audiences.^[125] Spielberg recalled that Empire of the Sun was one of his most enjoyable films to make. Thomson called it "a great work through and through" and "the first clear sign that Spielberg the showman was an artist, too."^[127]

In 1989, Spielberg intended to direct Rain Man, but instead directed Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade to meet his contractual obligations. Producer Lucas and star Ford returned for the film. A longtime James Bond fan, Spielberg cast Sean Connery as Jones's father, Henry Jones, Sr. Due to complaints about violence in Temple of Doom, Spielberg returned to more family-friendly fare for the third installment.Last Crusade received mostly positive reviews and was a box office success, earning $474 million; it was his biggest hit since E.T. Biographer Joseph McBride wrote that it was a comeback for Spielberg, and Spielberg acknowledged the amount he has learned from making the Indiana Jones series. Ebert wrote that, "If there is just a shade of disappointment after seeing this movie, it has to be because we will never again have the shock of this material seeming new. Raiders of the Lost Ark, now more than ever, seems a turning point in the cinema of escapist entertainment, and there was really no way Spielberg could make it new all over again. What he has done is to take many of the same elements, and apply all of his craft and sense of fun to make them work yet once again. And they do.^[131]

Also in 1989, he reunited with Richard Dreyfuss for the romantic drama Always, about an aerial firefighter. It is a modern remake of one of Spielberg's favorite childhood films, A Guy Named Joe (1943). The story was personal; he said "As a child I was very frustrated, and maybe I saw my own parents [in A Guy Named Joe]. I was also short of girlfriends. And it stuck with me." Spielberg had discussed the film with Dreyfuss back in 1975, with up to twelve drafts being written before filming commenced.Always was commercially unsuccessful and received mixed reviews.^[133]Janet Maslin of TheNew York Times wrote, "Always is filled with big, sentimental moments, it lacks the intimacy to make any of this very moving."^[134]

After a brief setback in which Spielberg felt "artistically stalled", he returned in 1991 with Hook, about a middle-aged Peter Pan (Robin Williams), who returns to Neverland and encounters Tinker Bell (Julia Roberts) and the eponymous Captain Hook (Dustin Hoffman). During filming, the stars clashed on set; Spielberg told 60 Minutes that he would never work with Roberts again. Nominated for five Academy Awards, the studio enjoyed the film but most critics did not; Thomson called it "maudlin."^[74] Writing for The Washington Post, Desson Howe described the film as "too industrially organized", and thought it mundane.^[137] At the box office, it earned more than $300 million worldwide from a $70 million budget.^[138]

1993–1998: Oscar winner

In 1993, Spielberg returned to the adventure genre with Jurassic Park, based on Michael Crichton's bestseller, with a screenplay by Crichton and David Koepp. Jurassic Park is set on a fictional island near Costa Rica, where a businessman (Richard Attenborough) has hired a team of geneticists to create a wildlife park of de-extinct dinosaurs. In a departure from his usual order of planning, Spielberg and the designers storyboarded certain sequences from the novel early on. The film also used computer-generated imagery provided by Industrial Light & Magic; Jurassic Park was completed on time and became the highest-grossing film at the time, and won three Academy Awards. The film's dominance during its theatrical run, as well as Spielberg's $250 million salary, made him self-conscious of his own success.

Also in 1993, Spielberg directed Schindler's List, about Oskar Schindler, a businessman who helped save 1,100 Jews from the Holocaust.^[142] Based on Schindler's Ark, Spielberg waited ten years to make the film as he did not feel "mature" enough. He wanted to embrace his heritage, and after the birth of his son, Max, he said that "it greatly affected me [...] A spirit began to ignite in me, and I became a Jewish dad". Filming commenced on March 1, 1993, in Poland, while Spielberg was still editing Jurassic Park in the evenings. To make filming "bearable", Spielberg brought his wife and children with him. Against expectations, the film was a commercial success, and Spielberg used his percentage of profits to start the Shoah Foundation, a non-profit organization that archives testimonies of Holocaust survivors.Schindler's List won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Spielberg's first as Best Director. It also won seven BAFTAs, and three Golden Globes.^[151][152]Schindler's List is one of the AFI's 100 best American films ever made.^[153]

Ebert wrote, "Flaubert once wrote that he disliked Uncle Tom's Cabin because the author was constantly preaching against slavery. 'Does one have to make observations about slavery?' he asked. 'Depict it; that's enough.' And then he added, 'An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere.' That would describe Spielberg, the author of this film. He depicts the evil of the Holocaust, and he tells an incredible story of how it was robbed of some of its intended victims. He does so without the tricks of his trade, the directorial and dramatic contrivances that would inspire the usual melodramatic payoffs. Spielberg is not visible in this film. But his restraint and passion are present in every shot."^[154] Filmmaker Claude Lanzmann, criticized the film for its weak representation of the Holocaust.Imre Kertész, a Hungarian author and concentration camp survivor, also disliked the film, saying, "I regard as kitsch any representation of the Holocaust that is incapable of understanding or unwilling to understand the organic connection between our own deformed mode of life and the very possibility of the Holocaust."^[156] Thomson calls it "the most moving film I have ever seen."^[74]

In 1994, Spielberg took a break from directing to spend more time with his family, and set up his new film studio, DreamWorks, with Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen. After his hiatus, he returned to directing with a sequel to Jurassic Park, The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997). A loose adaptation of Michael Crichton's novel The Lost World, the plot follows mathematician Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) and his researchers who study dinosaurs at Jurassic Park which is on an island and are confronted by another team with a different agenda. Spielberg wanted the onscreen creatures to be more realistic than in the first film; he used 3D storyboards, computer imagery and robotic puppets. Budgeted at $73 million,The Lost World: Jurassic Park opened in May 1997 and was one of the highest grossing films of the year. The Village Voice critic opined that The Lost World was "better crafted but less fun" than the first film, while The Guardian wrote "It looks like a director on autopilot [...] The special effects brook no argument."

Amistad (1997), his first film released under DreamWorks, was based on the true story of the events in 1839 aboard the slave ship La Amistad. Producer Debbie Allen, who had read the book Amistad I in 1978, thought Spielberg would be perfect to direct. Spielberg was hesitant taking on the project, afraid that it would be compared to Schindler's List, but he said, "I've never planned my career [...] In the end I do what I think I gotta do." Starring Morgan Freeman, Anthony Hopkins, Djimon Hounsou and Matthew McConaughey, Spielberg used Allen's ten years worth of research to reenact the difficult historical scenes. The film struggled to find an audience, and underperformed at the box office; Spielberg admitted that Amistad "became too much of a history lesson."

Spielberg's 1998 release was World War II epic Saving Private Ryan, about a group of US soldiers led by Captain Miller (Tom Hanks) sent to bring home a paratrooper whose three older brothers were killed in the same twenty-four hours of the Normandy landing. Filming took place in England, and US MarineDale Dye was hired to train the actors and keep them in character during the combat scenes. Halfway through filming, Spielberg reminded the cast that they were making a tribute to thank "your grandparents and my dad, who fought in [the war]". Upon release, critics praised the direction and its realistic portrayal of war. The film grossed a successful $481 million worldwide^[167] and Spielberg won a second Academy Award for Best Director. In August 1999, Spielberg and Hanks were awarded the Distinguished Public Service Medal from Secretary of DefenseWilliam S. Cohen. Thomson writes "Ryan changed war films: combat, shock, wounds, and fear had never been so graphically presented; and yet there was also a true sense of what duties and ideas had felt like in 1944. I disliked the framing device. I would have admired a director who trusted us to get there without that. Never mind—Ryan is a magnificent film."^[74] Ebert wrote "Spielberg knows how to make audiences weep better than any director since Chaplin in City Lights. But weeping is an incomplete response, letting the audience off the hook. This film embodies ideas. After the immediate experience begins to fade, the implications remain and grow."^[170]

2001–2012: Master of technology

Spielberg returned to science fiction with A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), a loose adaptation of Brian Aldiss's short story "Supertoys Last All Summer Long" (1969). Stanley Kubrick had bought the rights to the story in 1979 and worked on an adaptation for years.^[171] He told Spielberg about the project in 1984 and suggested that he direct, believing the story was closer to Spielberg's sensibilities. In 1999, Kubrick died. Spielberg decided to direct A.I. and wrote the screenplay himself.^[172] Spielberg tried to be faithful to Kubrick's vision^[173] and made several allusions to his friend's work^[174