On December 18, 1946, a baby named Steven Allan Spielberg was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. As a kid, Steven was a scrawny, scared dreamer who hid under his covers from imaginary monsters. But he found that the best way to fight his fears was to make movies about them. By age 12, he was using his dad's home camera to film toy trains crashing for his own little adventure stories. At 13, he made a 40-minute war film. At 16, he made a feature-length sci-fi movie called Firelight.
When the major film schools rejected him, Steven snuck onto the Universal Studios lot, found an empty office, and basically pretended to work there for months until a producer finally gave him a job directing TV episodes. His first big movie was Jaws in 1975, the shark thriller that invented the summer blockbuster and made millions of kids afraid to go in the water. Then came Close Encounters, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, the Indiana Jones series, and Jurassic Park, which used groundbreaking computer animation to bring dinosaurs roaring back to life.
Steven also made serious films like Schindler's List about the Holocaust, which won seven Academy Awards. He has now directed more than 30 feature films, founded the studio DreamWorks with friends, and seen his movies earn over 11 billion dollars at the box office. The scared kid from Cincinnati who once hid under blankets ended up filling movie theaters all over the world with wonder, dinosaurs, friendly aliens, and the unforgettable music of John Williams. Steven taught Hollywood that imagination is the greatest special effect of all.
