Steven Andrew Soderbergh (born January 14, 1963) is an American film producer, screenwriter, cinematographer, editor, and an Academy Award-winning film director. He is best known for directing the films Sex, Lies, and Videotape, Erin Brockovich, Traffic, Ocean's Eleven, Che and The Informant!.

Soderbergh was born in Atlanta, Georgia, the son of Mary Ann (née Bernard) and Peter Andrew Soderbergh, who was a university administrator and educator. He has Swedish ancestry (the family's original surname in Swedish, Söderberg, was changed to Soderbergh when they immigrated to the United States). When he was a child, his family moved from Atlanta to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where his father became Dean of Education at Louisiana State University (LSU). There he discovered filmmaking as a teenager, directing short Super 8 mm films with equipment borrowed from LSU students.

His primary high school education was at Louisiana State University Laboratory School, a K-12 school that is directed by the University. While still taking classes there around the age of fifteen, Soderbergh enrolled in the university's film animation class and began making short 16 mm films with secondhand equipment.