Steven Spielberg
National Medal of Arts recipient Steven Spielberg with President and First Lady Biden. Photo courtesy of White House
Bio
Steven Spielberg is one of the world's most successful and influential filmmakers and is currently chairman of Amblin Entertainment. He made his feature film directorial debut in 1974 with The Sugarland Express, which he also co-wrote. The following year, he directed Jaws, the first film to break the $100 million box office mark and transformed the economics of the film business. He earned Academy Award nominations for Best Director for The Fabelmans, West Side Story, Lincoln, Munich, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Additionally, he earned DGA Award nominations for those films, as well as Amistad, Empire of the Sun, The Color Purple, and Jaws. Among a host of career accolades, he is a three-time Academy Award winner, a Kennedy Center Honoree, a recipient of the Irving G. Thalberg Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015 from President Barack Obama.
White House citation:
For filmmaking that entertains, educates, and inspires. Growing up moved by the power of films, Steven Spielberg is considered one of the greatest filmmakers ever, using his gift of storytelling to stretch our imaginations, confront the horrors of history, and inspire us to be the characters of our Nation and the world’s future — full of courage, honor, and dignity.
The arts, culture, and humanities are foundational to storytelling—and from the beginning of time, the telling of stories has been a way for us to capture the past and inform the future...a way for us to entertain and educate...and a way to bridge differences and provide a communal experience. Stories are the fabric of our civilization. A world without arts is a world of diminished vision.