Even as a toddler he had never been able to resist spectacle.
At three years of age, he staged a miniature train crash using his Lionel set only to observe the carnage repeatedly reoccur.
Moreover, he had an interest in World War II – but he slowly grew apart form his Jewish religion.
Growing up, he never realized that he would grow up to become the richest celebrity on the face of the planet, worth a lot more than a household name, Michael Jordan, Oprah Winfrey and even George Lucas.
And yet such was the case.
Who then is this legendary celebrity?
Was unable to accept his roots
This
“Not that I like to admit it, but when I was seven, eight, nine, years old God forgive me, I was ashamed that we were orthodox Jews. I was ashamed of the external view of the Jewish practices of my parents. He once admittedly felt never really ashamed to be Jewish, but was occasionally uneasy.
He would later have to years to fully accept the culture and religion he was born in.
His father was an early computer pioneer, electrical engineer. His mother was a concert pianist who loved the theatrics and operated a kosher dairy restaurant. But the relative permanence of the home life was not to be permanence after all – his parents divorced him in his middle teens.
The agonized chapter
That division would plague him. He once said: “I needed a special friend when they parted.” And I was forced to use my imagination to go to those places that felt good–those places that would allow me to forget the pain.” The imagination then, was his escape, and later his profession. Many years later, he confessed that, looking back at that distressing period of his life, he fantasized about an unearthly friend, an alien, as the ultimate representation of loneliness, grief, and recovery.
His three sisters were still in Saratoga with his mother and he went to stay with his father in Los Angeles. Despite the actual version of events, he had blamed his father as the reason behind the divorce for a long time, almost oblivious to the fact that it was his mother who had been cheating.
Those feelings leaked into his early artistic output – where fatherless homes, fractured families, and children wandering in pursuit of belonging became common themes.
He was a teen when he became fascinated by World War II not because of its politics or its devastation, but because of the unrefined tales of heroism and survival. He would rummage through library archives, pulling out old war footage and then developing whole characters and plots that might have just as easily been on those battle fields. It was not just fascination, it was how he made sense of heroism, loss and the world around him.
There was a black-and-white photo below, and finding it difficult to think who this giant would become someday, one can easily envision the world that he used to grow up in and the setting that contributed to his formation.
Looking at the photo, not many people would notice the boy. But his work is well known to the world.
Home videos to Hollywood titan
Ok, so, now, guess who we are talking about in case you did not guess it yet.
That’s Steven Spielberg alright — the guy who created some of the largest movies ever. According to Forbes, Spielberg has become the richest celebrity alive today with his net worth soaring to an estimate of $5.3 billion.
Spielberg started early in life. He fell in love with the process of telling stories and cinema, and as a teenager, he began to create amateur films. With only 500 dollars, he produced his first film, Firelight, at the age of 17. It opened (and closed) in a single evening – making a $1 profit.
That modest start was the prelude to a sensational career, however.
By 1969, Spielberg was the youngest director to get a long-term contract with a big Hollywood studio due to his 22-minute short Amblin, which had amazed the crowd at the Atlanta Film Festival.
Then the hits just kept on coming: Jaws, E.T., Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park – the list is endless.
His movies have earned a total of more than 10 billion dollars in the box office and Spielberg himself has become a pillar in the history of movies.
A profitable heritage
Spielberg does not just produce films, he creates entertainment empires. Reportedly, he gets 2 percent of all ticket sales at Universal Studios theme parks, a partnership that only gets more and more valuable as the theme parks expand, such as the hotly-anticipated Epic Universe park.
Although admittedly his largest box office draw to date, with a staggering $1.058 billion in ticket sales, Jurassic Park is closely followed by other enormous blockbusters such as E.T. ($797.3 million) and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull ($786.6 million).
Interestingly, some of his most critically-hyped flicks failed to make his top 10 highest-grossing films, such as Schindler List, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Catch Me If You Can.
Still record breaking
Spielberg entered the Forbes list of the wealthiest Americans in 1994 — and he has not left it since. He still holds – and shatters- box office records with each new project, proving that the person behind the camera is where the true power is.
The story of Spielberg, a young boy with a camera to a billionaire director, is a real proof that passion, persistence, and imagination can actually bring one to unbelievable heights.
