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Spike Lee was born Shelton Jackson Lee on March 20, 1957, in Atlanta, Georgia. At a very young age, he moved from pre-civil rights Georgia, to Brooklyn, New York. Lee came from artistic, education-grounded background; his father was a jazz musician, and his mother, a schoolteacher. He attended school in Morehouse College in Atlanta and developed his film making skills at Clark Atlanta University. After graduating from Morehouse, Lee attended the Tisch School of Arts graduate film program. He made a controversial short, The Answer (1980), a reworking of D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915), a ten-minute film. Lee went on to produce a 45-minute film Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads (1983) which won a student Academy Award. In 1986, Spike Lee made the film, She's Gotta Have It (1986), a comedy about sexual relationships. The movie was made for $175,000, and earned $7 million at the box office, which launched his career and allowed him to found his own production company, 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks. His next movie was School Daze (1988), which was set at a historically black school, focused mostly on the conflict between the school and the Fraternities, of which he was a strong critic, portraying them as materialistic, irresponsible, and uncaring. With his School Daze (1988) profits, Lee went on to make his landmark film, Do the Right Thing (1989), a movie based specifically his own neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. The movie portrayed the racial tensions that emerge in the Bed-Stuy neighborhood on one very hot day. The movie garnered Oscar nominations for Best Original Screenplay, for Danny Aiello for supporting actor, and sparked a debate on racial relations. Lee went on to produce and direct the jazz biopic Mo' Better Blues (1990), the first of many Spike Lee films to feature Denzel Washington, including the biography of Malcolm X (1992), in which Washington portrayed the civil rights leader. The movie was a success, and garnered an Oscar nomination for Washington. The pair would work together again on He Got Game (1998), an excursion into the collegiate world showing the darker side of college athletic recruiting, as well as the 2006 film Inside Man (2006). Spike Lee's role as a documentarian has expanded over the years, highlighted by his participation in Lumière and Company (1995), the Oscar-nominated 4 Little Girls (1997), to his Peabody Award-winning biographical adaptation of Black Panther leader in A Huey P. Newton Story (2001), through his 2005 Emmy Award-winning examination of post-Katrina New Orleans in When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts (2006) and its follow-up five years later If God Is Willing and da Creek Don't Rise (2010). Through his production company 40 Acres and A Mule Filmworks, Lee continues to create and direct both independent films and projects for major studios, as well as working on story development, creating an internship program for aspiring filmmakers, releasing music, and community outreach and support. He is married to Tonya Lewis Lee, and they have two sons, Satchel and Jackson.

Profiles of John Thompson (1995) and Albert Belle (1996)

(1996) Music video: Directed video for <a class="ipc-md-link ipc-md-link--entity" href="/name/nm0001391/?ref_=nmwrk">Michael Jackson</a> (filmed in Brazil)

(1996) Music video: Directed <a class="ipc-md-link ipc-md-link--entity" href="/name/nm0001391/?ref_=nmwrk">Michael Jackson</a> video &quot;They Don&#39;t Care About Us&quot; (both versions)

(1992) Music video: Directed <a class="ipc-md-link ipc-md-link--entity" href="/name/nm0002239/?ref_=nmwrk">Prince</a> video &quot;Money Don&#39;t Matter 2 Night&quot;

(1991) Music video: Directed <a class="ipc-md-link ipc-md-link--entity" href="/name/nm0279329/?ref_=nmwrk">Fishbone</a> video &quot;Sunless Saturday&quot;

Directed segments on HBO series &quot;Real Sports&quot;

(1989) TV commercials: Appeared in Nike sneakers, as Mars Blackmon (with <a class="ipc-md-link ipc-md-link--entity" href="/name/nm0003044/?ref_=nmwrk">Michael Jordan</a>)

(1999) TV commercial: Directed commercial for Pizza Hut (Big New Yorker Pizza)

(2002) TV commercials: Directed commercials for K-Mart

(2000) TV commercial: Directed commercial for JC Decaux

Print ad: Ben &amp; Jerry&#39;s ice cream

(2002) TV commercial: Directed commercial for Nike Air Jordan (as Mars Blackmon)

(1993) Music video: Directed and appeared in <a class="ipc-md-link ipc-md-link--entity" href="/name/nm1293955/?ref_=nmwrk">Naughty By Nature</a>&#39;s video &quot;Hip Hop Hooray&quot;

(2003) TV commercial: Directed and appeared in commercial for Nike Air Jordan (as Mars Blackmon)

TV commercial: Directed TV commercial for Taco Bell, featuring basketball players &#39;Shaquille O&#39;Neal (I)&#39; and <a class="ipc-md-link ipc-md-link--entity" href="/name/nm0645927/?ref_=nmwrk">Hakeem Olajuwon</a>.

Music video: Directed video for &quot;Fight the Power&quot; by <a class="ipc-md-link ipc-md-link--entity" href="/name/nm2162228/?ref_=nmwrk">Public Enemy</a>.

TV commercial: Appeared in commercial for &quot;Orange&quot; (UK phone company).

(1983) Music video: Directed &quot;White Lines (Don&#39;t Don&#39;t Do It)&quot; video by <a class="ipc-md-link ipc-md-link--entity" href="/name/nm0334739/?ref_=nmwrk">Grandmaster Flash</a> and <a class="ipc-md-link ipc-md-link--entity" href="/name/nm0577307/?ref_=nmwrk">Melle Mel</a>.

(2004) TV commercial: Directed commercial for Telecom

(2006) TV commercial: Directed commercial for Ford Motor Co.

(2006) TV commercial: Directed commercial for Fresh direct

(1997) Directed &quot;Niggericans&quot;, an unused segment of <a class="ipc-md-link ipc-md-link--entity" href="/title/tt0120240/?ref_=nmwrk">SUBWAYStories: Tales from the Underground (1997)</a>.

(1991) Print ads: Appeared in Nike&#39;s Air Jordan tennis shoes (as Mars Blackmon)

(1995) TV commercial: Directed commercial for the &quot;New York Times&quot; newspaper

(1986) Music video: Directed and appeared in <a class="ipc-md-link ipc-md-link--entity" href="/name/nm1179722/?ref_=nmwrk">Anita Baker</a>&#39;s &quot;No One In The World&quot; video

(1992) Wrote foreword for &quot;A Separate Cinema&quot; by John Kisch and Edward Mapp.

(2000) TV commercial: Mazda Demio (Japan)

(January 2014) TV commercial playing the role of a director for Sony.

(19880 author of article, &quot;Class Act in January/February 1988 issue of &quot;American Film.&quot;

Other works

Spike Lee

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