50 Fun Facts About Steven Spielberg

In which city was Steven Spielberg born in 1946?

Cincinnati: there his grandmother taught English to Holocaust survivors, and one taught little Steven his numbers from the tattoo on his arm.

Young Spielberg made a short Western film to earn what?

A Boy Scout photography merit badge: after a movie train wreck terrified him, he also staged and filmed crashes with his Lionel train set.

Which film school famously rejected the young Spielberg because of his mediocre grades?

USC: turned down, he studied elsewhere, then dropped out when Universal hired him to direct television.

Spielberg later named his production company after which 1968 short film of his?

Amblin': impressed, Universal executive Sidney Sheinberg offered Spielberg a seven-year directing contract.

Spielberg's directorial debut, Duel (1971), pits Dennis Weaver's salesman against what?

A menacing tanker truck: after Duel aired on ABC, Universal had Spielberg shoot extra scenes so it could be released in cinemas.

Which 1974 Goldie Hawn film was Spielberg's first theatrical feature, and his first with composer John Williams?

The Sugarland Express: it won Best Screenplay at Cannes and was inspired by a real 1969 case of young parents who took a policeman hostage to get their son back.

Jaws was shot mostly on location on which Massachusetts island?

The sandy sea floor stayed shallower than 35 feet for 12 miles offshore, letting the mechanical sharks work out of sight of land.

Jaws held the record as highest-grossing film in history until which movie arrived two years later?

Star Wars: Jaws's mechanical sharks kept malfunctioning, so Spielberg mostly suggested the shark, which he said made it a better film.

In Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the aliens' coordinates lead to which Wyoming landmark?

Devils Tower: haunted by its shape, Roy sculpts it in mashed potatoes at dinner, then builds a model so big his family leaves him.

Which 1979 Spielberg action-comedy, written by Zemeckis and Gale, was regarded as his first critical flop?

One critic called it "the most conspicuous waste since the last major oil spill", though it still grossed $92 million.

Raiders of the Lost Ark was based on a story by which two men?

George Lucas and Philip Kaufman: Kaufman, developing the idea with Lucas in 1975, suggested the lost Ark of the Covenant as the film's goal.

Which 1984 film directed by Spielberg led him to suggest the new PG-13 rating?

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom: parents were irate that it got a PG, so Spielberg suggested a new rating between PG and R.

Who wrote the screenplay for Spielberg's 1982 film about a stranded alien and a boy named Elliott?

Melissa Mathison: then Harrison Ford's girlfriend, she at first turned the job down, saying she meant to quit writing.

Which actor played Elliott, the boy who befriends E.T.?

Henry Thomas: Spielberg shot the film in rough chronological order so the young cast's goodbyes to E.T. would feel real.

Spielberg's The Color Purple (1985) was adapted from a novel by whom?

Alice Walker: wary of Hollywood, she required that half the production team be African American, female or 'people of the Third World'.

Spielberg's Empire of the Sun (1987) was the first American film in decades to shoot in which city?

Shanghai: David Lean was originally set to direct, with Spielberg producing, before Spielberg took the job himself.

In Hook (1991), who plays the grown-up Peter Pan?

Robin Williams: his Peter Banning is a workaholic lawyer who has forgotten he was Peter Pan, until Captain Hook kidnaps his children.

Jurassic Park surpassed which film to become the highest-grossing movie of all time in 1993?

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial: Elliott lures the alien with Reese's Pieces, and sales of the candy soared after the film came out.

Jurassic Park is set on which fictional island off Costa Rica?

Isla Nublar: Spielberg supervised the film's post-production from Poland while he was shooting Schindler's List.

Schindler's List was based on a Booker Prize-winning novel by which Australian author?

Thomas Keneally: survivor Poldek Pfefferberg, who made telling Oskar Schindler's story his life's mission, inspired him to write it.

The main theme of Schindler's List is played on which solo instrument?

Violin: Itzhak Perlman plays it, and the crew shot at real locations, including Oskar Schindler's actual factory.

What did Spielberg do with his profits from Schindler's List?

Founded the Shoah Foundation: he refused a salary for the film, calling it 'blood money', and the foundation set out to videotape survivors' testimony.

Spielberg co-founded DreamWorks in 1994 with which two partners?

Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen: Katzenberg approached the other two after resigning from Disney, and their initials form the SKG in DreamWorks SKG.

Which 1997 Spielberg film about an 1839 slave-ship revolt was his first release under DreamWorks?

Amistad: producer Debbie Allen had researched the revolt for years, and Spielberg drew on her research to reenact the historical scenes.

Saving Private Ryan's Omaha Beach sequence was actually filmed on a beach in which country?

Ireland: associate producer Kevin De La Noy already had ties to the Irish Army from shooting Braveheart there.

Spielberg's first two Best Director Oscars both came for films about which war?

WWII: Schindler's List won him the first and Saving Private Ryan the second, and as a boy he made 8 mm war movies partly inspired by his father's WWII stories.

A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) was a long-gestating project of which director, who died in 1999?

Stanley Kubrick: he believed the story was closer to Spielberg's sensibilities than his own and wanted Spielberg to direct it.

In Spielberg's Minority Report, what do the psychic 'precogs' foresee before they happen?

Murders: Precrime chief John Anderton arrests would-be killers, until the precogs predict that he will commit a murder himself.

Catch Me If You Can (2002) is based on the autobiography of which con artist?

Frank Abagnale: much of his con-man story has since been heavily disputed, and records suggest many of his claims were exaggerated.

Spielberg's Munich (2005) dramatizes Israel's response to the murder of its athletes at which event?

The Summer Olympics: the film follows a Mossad-backed team sent to assassinate Palestinians held responsible for the 1972 Munich massacre.

Spielberg's Lincoln (2012) covers Abraham Lincoln's push to pass which constitutional amendment?

The Thirteenth: DreamWorks optioned Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals, which Tony Kushner's script drew on, while she was still writing it.

Who won Best Supporting Actor for Spielberg's Bridge of Spies (2015)?

Mark Rylance: he played Soviet spy Rudolf Abel, whom lawyer James Donovan negotiated to trade for downed U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers.

Ready Player One (2018) was adapted from a novel by whom?

Ernest Cline: Warner Bros. moved the film from December 2017 to March 2018 to avoid opening against a big December franchise sequel.

What is the name of Spielberg's stand-in in his semi-autobiographical 2022 film The Fabelmans?

Sammy Fabelman: as happened to Spielberg's own parents, Sammy's mother and father announce their divorce in the film.

Which director plays a legendary Hollywood filmmaker in the final scene of The Fabelmans?

David Lynch: Spielberg kept his role a closely guarded secret while the film was in production.

Spielberg's production company was co-founded with which two producers?

Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall: the pair later struck out on their own, launching The Kennedy/Marshall Company with a Paramount deal.

Which of these hits did Spielberg produce, rather than direct?

Back to the Future: Zemeckis first kept it from Spielberg, not wanting to hand him another flop, and brought it back after every studio passed.

In 2001, which honor did Queen Elizabeth II give Spielberg?

A knighthood: as he isn't a British citizen, it was honorary, so he didn't kneel to receive it and can't be called 'Sir'.

In Spielberg's The Post, the Washington Post fights to publish which secret government study?

The Pentagon Papers: the Supreme Court ruled 6–3 that the government could not stop the Times and the Post from publishing them.

Which actress, Spielberg's wife since 1991, did he meet on the set of the second Indiana Jones film?

Kate Capshaw: she later converted to Judaism, the faith Spielberg grew up in.

Which of these was Spielberg's first musical, released in 2021?

It was another of the rare Spielberg films not scored by John Williams, since it used Leonard Bernstein's music.

Which segment did Spielberg direct in Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983)?

"Kick the Can": in it, a newcomer to a retirement home gets the residents to play the childhood game, and they briefly turn young again.

Which director told the young Spielberg, 'So they tell me you want to be a picture maker'?

John Ford: Ford told him a horizon belongs at the top or bottom of the frame, and ever since, Spielberg has watched a Ford film before starting one of his own.

To which Arizona city did Spielberg's family move in 1957, where he shot his early amateur films?

Phoenix: The Fabelmans restages the move, with the young hero's father taking a new job there.

What was the title of teenage Spielberg's feature-length sci-fi film, funded by his father?

Firelight: he later reproduced many of its shots for Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

At which university did Spielberg finally complete his bachelor's degree in 2002?

Cal State Long Beach: he returned three decades after dropping out and submitted Schindler's List to complete his degree.

Spielberg directed 'Murder by the Book', the first regular episode of which detective series?

Columbo: though unhappy with his TV work, Spielberg used jobs like this Steven Bochco-scripted episode to hone his craft.

Which 1989 Dreyfuss romance was Spielberg's remake of A Guy Named Joe?

Always: for its forest-fire scenes, the filmmakers used footage of the huge 1988 Yellowstone fires.

Which EA video game series did Spielberg create?

Medal of Honor: the idea came to him while making Saving Private Ryan, and he sold the franchise to Electronic Arts in 2000.

Which 1985 NBC anthology did Spielberg create, pitched as Twilight Zone meets Hitchcock?

NBC gave him a two-year contract for the show.