The Hollywood Press Association announced that Steven Spielberg will receive the prestigious Cecil B. DeMille Award at the Golden Globe Awards on January 13th, 2008.
Spielberg was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, 1947, to Arnold (an electronic engineer and computer expert) and Leah (a former concert pianist).
A self-described "Jewish Nerd", as a youth, Steven borrowed his father's 8mm motion-picture-camera to record family get-togethers.
No doubt, fertile childhood fantasies gave rise to his early creations, which were often based on wild storylines, and rife with unusual camera angles.
The lad's home projects usually starred his three older sisters who often met with unpleasant demises.
"Death, usually," he laughingly recalled years later.
The diminutive director won his first award for a forty-five minute short titled, "Escape from Nowhere".
His early hobby, stargazing, probably fueled his imagination - and surfaced later - in a couple of features, which signaled a curiosity about the possibility of alien life in the galaxy.
The first major career break was with Amblin'.
The tale about two hitchhikers travelling from the Mojave Desert to the Pacific Coast singled out his potential and landed him a seven year contract with Universal.
When the short film was paired in movie houses with the blockbuster hit - "Love Story" - a lot of industry buzz followed.
For a short period, Steven directed segments of popular TV shows of the era.
Imagine that, on "Night Gallery", he coached the legendary film star - Joan Crawford.
His directing hand at "JAWS", a huge hit, put him squarely on the map in Hollywood, and he has never looked back since.
A couple of years later "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" was released - an intriguing switcheroo for the alien-invasion genre - after all, the creatures from outer space, unlike past depictions in the Hollywood Cinema, were benevolent.
"Encounters" was not a big financial hit, but "Raiders of the Lost Ark" which followed, was; subsequently, the action-adventure offering changed the creative and financial landscape for Mr. Spielberg considerably.
At this juncture, he became one of the top, in-demand directors, in the business.
To many, Schindler's list - a project close to his heart - is his masterpiece; a work which garnered him his first Oscar for directing.
The sixty-year old director has won six Golden Globes, and three Oscars, along with lifetime achievement honors from the Director's Guild of America, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, the American Film Institute, and the Kennedy Center.
The Cecil B. DeMille award has been given out annually by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association since 1952 and is named after one of the industry's most distinguished filmmakers.
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