Spielberg was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1946. He attended Long Beach University, but dropped out to pursue his entertainment career starting as an uncredited assistant editor on the classic western Wagon Train (1957). Among his early directing efforts were Battle Squad (1961), which combined World War Two Footage with footage of a stationary grounded airplane that he makes you believe is moving. He also directed Escape to Nowhere (1961), which featured kids as World War Two soldiers, including his sister Anne Spielberg (who later went on to co-write and produce 1988's Big, starring Tom Hanks), and The Last Gun (1959), a western.

All of these were short films, however, over the next couple of years Spielberg directed a couple of movies that would be foretelling to his future career in movies. In 1964 he directed Firelight, a movie about aliens invading a small town, and in 1967 he directed the movie Slipstream which remained unfinished. But in 1968 he directed the movie Amblin', which featured the desert prominently; this would not be the first Spielberg movie the desert would be so prominent in. Amblin would also become the production company he would produce many films with, including the classic E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.

Spielberg had an early TV movie directing project; Duel (1971), with Dennis Weaver, the film is considered a unique classic that still baffles some. In the early 1970s Spielberg was still working on TV, in Rod Serling's "Night Gallery", "Marcus Welby, M.D." and Columbo: Murder by the Book, to name a few. All of his work in television and short films, as well as his directing projects, was just the beginning of the gathering storm of talent that would become the director that made the brilliant films he would later become known for internationally. As an undoubted rising star, his major directorial effort was The Sugarland Express (1974), with Goldie Hawn. It was his next directorial effort that made Spielberg an international superstar among directors: Jaws (1975).

The classic shark attack tale was credited with starting the tradition of the summer blockbuster. As well as winning three Academy Awards, Jaws became the first movie to take $100 million, and tripled the average summer tourist population of Martha's Vineyard, which stood in for Amity in the movie. His next effort was the classic Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), a unique and very original UFO story that remains a cult classic, being nominated for an Oscar and, incidentally, being the first video to be released featuring Closed Caption subtitles. In 1978 Spielberg produced his first film, the forgettable I Wanna Hold Your Hand (1978), and followed his first effort with Used Cars (1980), a critically acclaimed, but mostly forgotten Kurt Russell\Jack Warden comedy.

Spielberg hit gold again in 1981 directing Raiders of the Lost Ark (another 4 Oscars), with Harrison Ford taking the part of Indiana Jones, and George Lucas producing. This was followed by two films in 1982. The first one was Poltergeist (1982), produced by Spielberg (but directed by Texas Chainsaw Massacre director Tobe Hooper) and spawning successful sequels. But the highest grossing movie of all time up to that point was the alien story, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), winner of three Oscars. Spielberg also made money a major part of the film industry, or at least a bigger part of the industry than it was before becoming the first producer to use product placement in his films, with the infamous placement of Reece’s Pieces in "E.T." There was also a further nod to George Lucas, with Star Wars action figures being named on screen, and a child trick or treating in a Yoda costume. (Lucas later repaid this favour by featuring a group of E.T's in a senate scene in Star Wars Episode 1: A Phantom Menace)

In 1984 Spielberg followed up Raiders with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), which was a commercial success but critically did not live up to its predecessor. As a producer Spielberg took on many projects in the 1980s, such as The Goonies, Twilight Zone: The Movie, Young Sherlock Holmes and Innerspace (winner of the 1987 Oscar for Visual Effects), and was the brains behind the little monsters in Gremlins (1984). Spielberg also produced the cartoon An American Tail (1986), a quaint little animated classic. But his biggest effort as producer in 1985 was the blockbuster Back to the Future (another Oscar winner), which made Michael J. Fox an instant superstar, and went on to spawn two successful sequels.

As a director, Spielberg took on the book The Colour Purple (1985), with Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey, which was a great success, being nominated for 11 Oscars. In 1987 he also directed Empire of the Sun (featuring a 13 year old Christian Bale, who would go on to play Batman earlier this year), which was a mixed success for the occasionally erratic Spielberg. But success would not escape him for long. The late eighties found Spielberg's projects at the centre of pop culture yet again.

In 1988 he produced the three-time Oscar winner and landmark animation\live action film Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and 1989 proved to be another big year for Spielberg, as he produced and directed Always, as well as Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and Back to the Future Part II. All three of the movies were box office and critical successes. Also in 1989 Steven Spielberg produced the little known comedy drama Dad, with Jack Lemmon and Ted Danson, which gave mostly mixed results.

Spielberg has an affinity for animation and was a strong voice in animation in the nineties. Aside from Roger Rabbit, Steven Spielberg produced the TV show "Tiny Toon Adventures" (1990), "Animaniacs" (1993), "Pinky and the Brain" (1995), "Freakazoid!" (1995), "Pinky, Elmyra & the Brain" (1998), "Family Dog" (1993) and "Toonsylvania" (1998). Spielberg also produced other cartoons such as The Land Before Time (1988), We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story (1993), as well as the live action versions of Casper (1995) and The Flintstones (1994), being credited in the latter as "Steven Spielrock." Spielberg also produced many Roger Rabbit separate cartoons, as well as many Pinky and the Brain, Animaniacs and Tiny Toons specials.

Spielberg was very active in the early nineties, as he directed Hook (1991), and produced such films as the Tom Hanks movie Joe Versus the Volcano (1990) and An American Tail: Fievel Goes West (1991). He also produced the unusual comedy thriller Arachnophobia (1990),Back to the Future Part III (1990), Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990), and Cape Fear (1991). While the movies were big successes in their own right, they did not quite bring in the box office as previous efforts. However, in 1993 Spielberg directed Jurassic Park which would go on to be the highest grossing movie of all time, for a short time, as well as being the winner of three Oscars.

But big box office spectacles were not his only line of business. He produced and directed Schindler's List (1993), a stirring film about the Holocaust, and for this he won best director at the Oscars, and also got Best Picture, as well as 5 others. In the mid-nineties Spielberg founded the production company Dreamworks, responsible for many box office successes in the nineties and the new century. Spielberg as a producer was very active in the late nineties spearheading such films as The Mask of Zorro (1998), 1997's Men in Black (another Oscar, I hope you're keeping count), and Deep Impact (1998). But on the directing front Spielberg was still in top form, directing and producing the epic Amistad (1997), a spectacular film that was shorted at the Oscars and in release due to the fact that its release date was moved around so much. But 1998 found one of Spielberg's best films in years come to the theatres: Saving Private Ryan (1998). This movie was an almost perfect film about World War Two that is spectacular in almost every respect. Many people believe the movie was snubbed at the Oscars, losing Best Picture to Shakespeare in Love; however, the movie did win five Oscars, including Best Director.

After Saving Private Ryan Spielberg produced a series of films, including Evolution, The Haunting and Shrek (another Oscar winner). Spielberg also produced two sequels to Jurassic Park (1993) which met with big box office but an increasingly critical crowd of movie-goers. In 2001 he produced the mini-series about World War Two entitled "Band of Brothers," and also in that year, he was back in the director's chair for Artificial Intelligence: AI (2001), a movie with a message and a huge budget. The movie did reasonably at the box office and received mixed signals from critics. 2002 was to bring another 2 high profile directing jobs, featuring mainstream A-list Hollywood actors, Minority Report (with Tom Cruise), and Catch Me If You Can (with Leonardo Di Caprio and Tom Hanks), followed by another movie featuring Hanks (The Terminal) the following year. Spielberg's production duties haven't been slipping either, with Men in Black II (2002), and the TV series Taken (2002) taking up extra time in what has proven to be an extremely busy schedule.

This year has been another typically busy year for Spielberg, directing the hugely successful remake of War of the Worlds, as well as working on his next release, Munich (in cinemas 27 January), a movie showing the aftermath of the 1972 Munich Olympic Games tragedy, where eleven Israeli athletes were taken hostage and murdered by a Palestinian terrorist group known as Black September. He has also announced an as yet untitled Abraham Lincoln movie, and the fourth movie in the successful Indiana Jones series, both scheduled for release in 2007. As for producing, there have been Legend of Zorro (2005) and next year's Memoirs of a Geisha, as well as the announced Monster House and Jurassic Park 4 (both set for a 2006 release) as well as the eagerly anticipated 2007 release of a live-action, but as yet untitled, Transformers movie.

In a career spanning 48 years (to date), with numerous awards (including, as we have seen, a ridiculous amount of Oscars), and an involvement with over 100 movies and TV series, including some of the most successful and best loved films of all time, Spielberg has recently (finally!) graduated from Long Beach State University with a degree in filmmaking. He shows no signs of stopping, or even slowing down, and that can only be a good thing for movie-goers everywhere...