Steven Spielberg
In 1995, the American Film Institute presented its Life Achievement Award to Steven Allan Spielberg, recognizing a career that had already placed him among the most commercially successful directors in the history of the medium.
Born on December 18, 1946, in Cincinnati, Spielberg grew up to pursue education at Saratoga High School, Arcadia High School, and California State University, Long Beach. He went on to work as a film director, building a body of work that established him as an American filmmaker of considerable output and reach. Over the course of his career, he accumulated a record that made him the highest-grossing film director of all time.
Beyond the commercial dimension of his work, Spielberg received recognition from a range of institutions across several decades. The Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States' foremost civilian honor, was among the distinctions conferred upon him. In 2001, he received an honorary knighthood, and in 2006 the Kennedy Center recognized his contributions with its Honor, an award given to those who have made lasting contributions to American culture through the performing arts.
The AFI Life Achievement Award in 1995 stands as one of the earliest formal acknowledgments of the cumulative weight of his career, situating Spielberg within a tradition of filmmakers whose work the institute deemed worthy of sustained recognition. That honor, taken alongside the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the honorary knighthood of 2001, and the Kennedy Center Honor of 2006, marks a consistent pattern of institutional recognition extending across more than a decade of his professional life.
Quotes by Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg's insights on:
I’d love to build a company that will continue to make movies well beyond me someday. And I’d like to help start something great, even investing in it myself.
3D is not a fire and forget tool. It takes a lot of very careful consideration and it will change your approach to where you put the camera so 3D isn’t for everybody.
Twenty years from now, there will still be a square screen, maybe even larger, and people will be sitting in a large, dark space, and they won’t know each other unless they bring friends along.
I think that the perceived downs in my own career come from just managing my time and not feeling that I have enough time for my family or my friends. You could put that in the personal life category but it’s all one category because I’ve got to balance my family.
I’m 62 years old. Am I old enough to win a lifetime achievement award? Yes, I am. Thank you very much.
Even if I’d had a really happy relationship with my father and there was no emotional hiatus for a decade and a half, I probably would still have made some of the same choices for movies that I’ve made.
I’m not a great man to my children. I’m just ‘Pop.’ The more involved I am with my kids, it keeps my head flat on top.
For one thing, I don’t think that anybody in any war thinks of themselves as a hero.
And I may often question choices I make as a producer. But I’ve never questioned the choices I make as a director.