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. Seven of his films have been inducted into the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant".
Spielberg was born in Cincinnati, Ohio , and grew up in Phoenix, Arizona. After directing several episodes for television, including Night Gallery and Columbo , he directed the television film Duel , his first full-length film which later received an international theatrical release.
He made his theatrical debut with The Sugarland Express and became a household name with the summer blockbuster Jaws In , 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. Spielberg has since directed the science fiction films A. Spielberg co-founded Amblin Entertainment and DreamWorks , and he has served as a producer for many successful films and television series, among them Poltergeist , Gremlins , Back to the Future , Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Band of Brothers He has had a long collaboration with the composer John Williams , with whom he has worked for all but five of his feature films.
Spielberg was born on December 18, , in Cincinnati, Ohio. They, in turn, taught him numbers:. One man in particular, I kept looking at his numbers—his number tattooed on his forearm 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 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.
