Steven Allan Spielberg KBE (born December 18, 1946) is an American film director, screenwriter, and film producer. In a career of over four decades, Spielberg's films have touched on many themes and genres. Spielberg's early sci-fi and adventure films, sometimes centering on children, were seen as an archetype of modern Hollywood blockbuster filmmaking. In later years his films began addressing such issues as The Holocaust, slavery, war and terrorism.

Spielberg won the Academy Award for Best Director for 1993's Schindler's List and 1998's Saving Private Ryan. Three of Spielberg's films, Jaws (1975), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), and Jurassic Park (1993), broke box office records, each becoming the highest-grossing film made at the time. To date, the unadjusted gross of all Spielberg-directed films exceeds $8.5 billion worldwide. Forbes magazine places Spielberg's personal net worth at $3.0 billion. In 2006, Premiere listed him as the most powerful and influential figure in the motion picture industry. Time listed him as one of the 100 Most Important People of the Century. At the end of the twentieth century, Life named him the most influential person of his generation.

Spielberg was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, the son of Jewish parents Leah Adler, a restaurateur and concert pianist, and Arnold Spielberg, an electrical engineer involved in the development of computers. He spent his childhood in Haddon Township, New Jersey and Scottsdale, Arizona, an upscale suburb of Phoenix. Throughout his early teens, Spielberg made amateur 8 mm "adventure" films with his friends, the first of which he shot at the Pinnacle Peak Patio restaurant in Scottsdale. He charged admission (25 cents) to his home films (which involved the wrecks he staged with his Lionel train set) while his sister sold popcorn.