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Steven Spielberg carved a name for himself as one of the greatest filmmakers in Hollywood because of his ingenious imagination when it comes to making movies. It’s easy to see the passion in his works, and this is all thanks to one person who helped nurture his God-given talent.

Credits: Steven Spielberg via CBS News

The director’s mother, Leah Adler, was one of his biggest supporters. In fact, she helped him skip school so he could practice his moviemaking skills. As an artist herself – an accomplished pianist who studied at Cincinatti’s Conservatory of Music – she understood the creativity in her son just aching to burst forth.

Steven Spielberg’s Mother Encouraged His Passion for Filmmaking by Forging Sick Notes

In an interview with 60 Minutes via CBS in 1992, Steven Spielberg’s mother, Leah Adler, spoke about how she encouraged her son to explore and expand his knowledge...

Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation celebrated its 30th anniversary with a star-studded gala in New York last week.

In addition to the legendary director, who established the Shoah Foundation after making his 1994 Oscar winner Schindler’s List, Meryl Streep, Whoopi Goldberg, Bruce Springsteen, Drew Barrymore, Itzhak Perlman, Debra Messing, Wendell Pierce and Alex Edelman were among the nearly 700 guests at the Ambassadors for Humanity Gala in Midtown Manhattan.

Of the luminaries in attendance, Edelman, who served as emcee for the evening, joked, “If your rabbi isn’t in this room, they’re worthless.”

Taking place just the day after Yom Kippur, the event, Edelman quipped, was “the most expensive break fast in New York City.”

“What a great way to unwind after a day of fasting and repentance, huh, the Holocaust?! With opening act, the Armenian genocide,” he continued, joking.

Turning serious, Edelman said he was there both as a grandchild of survivors,...

Steven Spielberg has an impressive portfolio of works in Hollywood. If fans get a closer look at his films, they can notice a pattern in them. Spielberg’s films are either great science fiction films or they’re set in the World War II period. The Jaws director once revealed the reason behind the recurring theme of World War 2 in his films.

Christian Bale as James Graham in Steven Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun | Amblin Entertainment

Fans should thank his father, Arnold Spielberg, a WWII veteran, who served as an inspiration for Spielberg’s projects like Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers. Arnold Spielberg was also an Electrical Engineer, who made significant contributions to his real-time data acquisition.

Steven Spielberg’s Dad Inspired Him To Make Great War Films Former President Barack Obama visits with Steven Spielberg and his father Arnold Spielberg in Los Angeles (Official White House...

While most of Steven Spielberg’s releases are very different from each other, which stands as a testament to his versatility, at the core, all of his movies are very personal to him. However, his 2022 semi-autobiographical drama, The Fabelmans, takes a step further, as it draws a more intimate portrayal of the Oscar-winning director’s formative years.

Apart from delving into his passion for cinema, the film also tackles his mother’s affair, which he discovered as a kid following his love for filmmaking.

Steven Spielberg Discovered His Mother’s Affair While Editing His Early Film A still from The Fabelmans | Credit: Amblin Entertainment & Reliance Entertainment

Before crafting monumental blockbusters and acclaimed dramas, Steven Spielberg spent his teenage years recording every moment around him on his Super 8. Although by the time he was 18, the director had already made 15 short films, his passion for filmmaking also led to him inadvertently recording...

Renowned for his brilliant storytelling and cinematic prowess, filmmaker Steven Spielberg has encountered his fair share of critiques and box office jitters throughout his illustrious career. However, when it came to the 2022 film, The Fabelmans, he was anxious not for anticipated reviews or ticket sales, but due to the impending reaction of his family members.

The Fabelmans | Credit:

Inspired by his own life, the film follows Gabriel Labelle as Sammy Fabelman, the sixteen-year-old son of The Fabelmans family, who dreams of becoming a filmmaker. It explores the protagonist’s family dynamics, friendships, and his love for filmmaking, and the acclaimed director later admitted to being extremely nervous when it came to screening the film for his sisters.

The Fabelmans Became the Most Nervous Screening For Steven Spielberg

Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans draws inspiration from his formative years as a budding filmmaker, centering around a character named Sammy who reflects...

Throughout his decades-long career, Steven Spielberg has worked on a variety of movies and has shared many different stories from sci-fi, thrillers, and adventure to comedies and drama. While the actor has shared that every film represents him in a way, there is one that stands out for its profound connection to the filmmaker’s own life and his love for cinema, The Fabelmans.

The Fabelmans (2022) | Credit: Universal Pictures

Released in 2022, the film follows Sammy Fabelman, a character based on Spielberg, as he navigates through family dynamics, friendships, and his passion for filmmaking. Spielberg has shared that working on the movie was deeply cathartic, likening it to a costly but invaluable form of therapy.

Steven Spielberg’s Therapeutic Venture With The Fabelmans

Steven Spielberg’s 2022 film The Fabelmans is often described as a semi-autobiography of the filmmaker, reflecting on his passion for filmmaking and its impact on his formative years.

The Fabelmans, the latest and one of the best films by legendary director Steven Spielberg, is now streaming in India on Sony Liv. The film is a semi-autobiographical drama that depicts Spielberg’s childhood and his love for cinema. It stars Gabriel Labelle as Sammy Fabelman, a young boy who discovers his passion for filmmaking while dealing with his family’s troubles. The film also features Michelle Williams, Paul Dano, Seth Rogen, and Judd Hirsch in supporting roles.

The Fabelmans is a deeply personal and emotional film that explores the power of movies to help us see the truth about ourselves and others. It is based on Spielberg’s own experiences as a child in Arizona, where he made his first films with a Super 8 camera. The film is dedicated to the memories of Spielberg’s real-life parents, Leah Adler and Arnold Spielberg, who died in 2017 and 2020, respectively.

The Fabelmans...

Playing Steven Spielberg’s mum — not your average acting gig

Your character Mitzi is based on Leah Adler, Steven Spielberg’s mother. She contains multitudes: she’s a classical pianist who chases tornadoes and buys monkeys, and is a devoted mother. Were you excited about channelling that energy?

Oh gosh, was I. I finished reading the script and thought, “They let her live, on every single page.” She’s like the piano that she loved: she has an eight-octave range, and she is allowed to use it. She lived while she was alive. She had that uncanny sense. She knew that this was her one go-around, and she made the most of it.

It feels like everyone who worked on this film was emotionally affected by it. Is that right?

That’s what it felt like for us. It felt like a spell was cast over the room. You’re recreating somebody’s childhood.

Having spent the past quarter century working for Steven Spielberg, Kristie Macosko Krieger has often visited The Milky Way, the Los Angeles restaurant once run by the director’s mother, Leah Adler (who died in 2017), and her second husband, Bernie Adler. Krieger also knew Spielberg’s late father, Arnold, and knew that Bernie and Arnold had once been close friends, but had no idea that a young Steven Spielberg had discovered the blooming relationship between his mother and the family friend when making home movies as part of his obsession with amateur filmmaking. This very personal story would come to light when making the semi-autobiographical The Fabelmans, which Krieger produced alongside Spielberg and Tony Kushner, who co-wrote the script with the director.

Krieger began her tenure with Spielberg as his assistant before rising through the ranks (associate producer, co-producer) to become his full-fledged, go-to producer when Kathleen Kennedy left for Lucasfilm.

Note: This article contains spoilers for the entirety of “The Fabelmans.”

Steven Spielberg’s latest film stays true to its cinematic themes of family and family drama that he’s covered throughout his career. But with “The Fabelmans,” the acclaimed filmmaker finally turns the focus on what has been portrayed through metaphor, subtext or theme in many of his previous films: his own life. The film explores Spielberg’s unconventional upbringing and entry into filmmaking through the eyes of Sammy Fabelman (Gabriel Labelle).

Much of “The Fabelmans” revolves around Sammy’s life at home with his artistic mother Mitzi (Michelle Williams), engineer father Burt (Paul Dano) and three sisters, who he often enlists to act in his home movies. But things take a sharp turn when his parents’ marriage begins to fall apart, uprooting his life in more ways than one.

Co-written by Spielberg and Tony Kushner, “The Fabelmans” takes...

Although Oscar-winning production designer Rick Carter has worked closely with directors Robert Zemeckis, James Cameron (“Avatar”), and J.J. Abrams (“Star Wars: The Force Awakens” and “The Rise of Skywalker”), his greatest collaboration spans 11 films with Steven Spielberg, from “Jurassic Park” to “The Fabelmans.”

Indeed, Spielberg brings out the best in Carter, who enjoys exploring characters through the spaces they inhabit. It’s a form of world-building based as much on psychology as visual design and has led to several self-discoveries for Carter about his own Goya-esque artistry and conscience in the post 9/11 cycle of war films: “War of the Worlds,” “Munich,” “War Horse,” “Lincoln,” and “The Bfg.”

But “The Fabelmans” — the director’s most personal film and nominated for seven Academy Awards, including production design — provided the greatest epiphany for the Oscar-nominated Carter because he was able to crack “the Spielberg code”: the set of themes and motifs that recur throughout his films,...

This year’s Oscar race for Best Original Score is the most interesting and competitive in years. You’ve got surprise composers Son Lux (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”) and Volker Bertelmann (“All Quiet on the Western Front”) going up against 90-year-old legend John Williams (“The Fabelmans”) and returnees Justin Hurwitz (“Babylon”) and Carter Burwell (“The Banshees of Inisherin”).

Which means there are several unusual components to this race. Four out of five films are Best Picture nominees (with “Babylon” as the outlier) and period pieces (with “Eeaao” as the contemporary multiverse entry), and there’s old-school versus new-school, with experimental rock band Son Lux taking on four celebrated vets: Williams has five Oscars and a record 53 nominations; Hurwitz has two Oscars for “La La Land” (score and original song “City of Stars”); and Burwell and Bertelmann have three and two nominations, respectively.

And not a clear favorite among them.

As Steven Spielberg’s latest Golden Globe-winning film, The Fabelmans ending explained how this coming-of-age story led to the career of one of Hollywood's greatest directors. Though not a direct biopic, The Fabelmans is largely inspired by Spielberg’s youth, his family, and his development as a young filmmaker. With a star-studded cast and newcomer Gabriel Labelle in the lead role of Sammy Fabelman, The Fabelmans has received largely positive reviews and multiple awards and nominations.

Spielberg, considered one of the greatest directors of all time, has had a long and storied career. He has won the Academy Award for Best Director twice, and could win a third time with his 2023 Oscar nomination for The Fabelmans — which itself is up for 7 Academy Awards including Best Picture. His most personal film comes almost 50 years after Spielberg’s first movie and features similar themes that can be seen in his most famous works,...

(Contains Spoilers)

I see how the major Oscar races are falling into place, and in most every scenario the biggest winners are “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and “The Banshees of Inisherin.” What has gotten shortchanged in this equation is a little film called “The Fabelmans,” Steven Spielberg’s oh-so-personal semi-autobiography about his young childhood and adolescence growing up in New Jersey, Arizona and Northern California. It follows Sammy Fabelman (Gabriel Labelle) as the stand in for Spielberg: a young guy obsessed with (what else?) making movies.

The film co-stars Michelle Williams as Sammy’s mother Mitzi, Paul Dano as his father Burt and Seth Rogen as close family friend Bennie. There’s also a showy supporting role from Judd Hirsch as the grizzled Jewish immigrant Uncle Boris. “The Fabelmans” earned a healthy seven Academy Award nominations, including picture, director (Spielberg), original screenplay (Spielberg and Tony Kushner), lead actress (Williams...

Michelle Williams’ performance in Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans has received mixed reviews, but a clip from the 1994 Oscars shows that she nailed her role as Mitzi Fabelman. The Fabelmans is a semi-autobiographical film based on the young life of Spielberg, with all the Fabelmans being based on him and his family. The character of Mitzi was based on his own mother, the late Leah Adler, who is shown on camera during Spielberg’s 1994 Academy Award speech for Best Directing. Despite criticism of Williams’ performance, her portrayal of Mitzi Fabelman is actually much closer to that of real-life Leah Adler than some might have believed.

The Fabelmans centers around young Sammy Fabelman throughout his adolescence, with viewers able to watch him grow into both a young man and a talented filmmaker. Both literally and figuratively, the film is shown through Spielberg’s eyes. While Sammy and most of the other...

Michelle Williams, the guest on this episode of The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast, is one of the most admired stage and screen actresses of her generation.

A four-time Oscar nominee, a Tony nominee, an Emmy winner and a two-time Golden Globe winner, she broke into the public eye in her teens as Jen Lindley on The WB’s teen drama TV series Dawson’s Creek, on which she appeared from 1998 through 2003, en route to proving her tremendous abilities in films like 2005’s Brokeback Mountain, 2008’s Wendy and Lucy, 2010’s Blue Valentine and Shutter Island, 2011’s My Week with Marilyn, 2016’s Manchester by the Sea and 2017’s The Greatest Showman and All the Money in the World; on Broadway in 2014’s Cabaret and 2016’s Blackbird; and on TV in the 2019 limited series Fosse/Verdon. In 2022, Williams shined as brightly as ever in Steven Spielberg’s autobiographical film The Fabelmans, playing Mitzi Fabelman,...

As filmmaker Steven Speilberg’s film ‘The Fablemans’, which won Best Picture and Best Director awards at 80th Golden Globes, is all set to be released in India on February 10, Reliance Entertainment has re-released its trailer to excite the audiences.

The over-two-minutes-long trailer of the semi-autobiographical from the dream maker, which includes an homage to the Cecille DeMille film, ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’, shows a little boy’s obsession with cinema in small-town America, where Jews are still hated, and how his pianist mother takes him nearer to it.

The film is a semi-autobiographical story loosely based on Spielberg’s adolescence and first years as a filmmaker, told through an original story of the fictional Sammy Fabelman, who explores how the power of movies can help him see the truth about his dysfunctional family.

According to ‘Variety’, Spielberg based the film on his own early years in Arizona and...

"The Fabelmans" is a semi-autobiographical film by legendary director Steven Spielberg. It's his most personal creation, giving a dramatized account of his childhood love for filmmaking, his family, and how he tried to find truth and understand their problems through a camera lens. It also gives us insight into his family members who either encouraged his talent or looked at it as a hobby. 

Michelle Williams plays Mitzi, the analog for Spielberg's mother Leah Adler, who supported Sammy (the Spielberg analog played by Gabriel Labelle) and his ambitions, finding her own path along the way. It's a profoundly personal film for Spielberg, who told The Hollywood Reporter in late 2022: 

"My life with my mom and dad taught me a lesson, which I hope this film in a small way imparts. Which is, when does a young person in a family start to see his parents as human beings? In my case,...

The Wonder (Netflix)

In 1862, Crimean War nursing veteran Lib Wright (Florence Pugh) sets off from London to the foggy Irish Midlands for a mystifying endeavor. Thirteen years since the Great Famine, devout villagers are eager to believe in a miracle: Young Anna (Kíla Lord Cassidy) hasn’t eaten in four months, and Lib must determine whether the 11-year-old truly is surviving on “manna from heaven.”

Lib’s vibrant blue nursing ensemble feels bold and authoritative, as she challenges the village’s — and the all-male tribunal’s — rigidity with her pragmatic, science-based knowledge. “Lib is coming as the modern, practical woman, going into a repressed, traditional society,” says costume designer Odile Dicks-Mireaux. “She’s trying to show there’s another world out there, really.”

Dicks-Mireaux’s research revealed that the highly trained Nightingale nurses did not wear a standard uniform but just “something practical.” Thus, she gleaned inspiration from imagery of...

"The Fabelmans" is Steven Spielberg's most personal film to date. "I've been hiding from this story since I was 17 years old," the filmmaker said last night, accepting his Best Director Golden Globe award. "I've told this story in parts and parcels all through my career ... but I've never had the courage to hit this story head on until Tony Kushner ... sat me down and said 'start telling me all these stories about your life.'"

Since their first pairing together on 2005's "Munich," frequent collaborator Tony Kushner has been just as invested in telling Spielberg's childhood story as the man himself. As an artist who has always been more comfortable approaching themes through the emotional safety of metaphor, it took a screenwriter like Kushner to help Spielberg open up and confront these dredged up memories directly, especially since the recent passing of his mother and father, Leah Adler and Arnold Spielberg.

The Golden Globes got out of Hollywood jail to stage a live show on Tuesday night.

The Golden Globes got out of Hollywood jail to stage a live show on Tuesday night that delivered lots of stars, a rallying cry from Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskiy, and a Will Smith slap gag from Eddie Murphy that brought the house down.

‘The Fabelmans’, ‘The Banshees Of Inisherin’ win top film awards at 2023 Golden Globes

Reunited with traditional ceremony broadcaster NBC – which is taking things slowly and agreed to air the show for one year following last year’s boycott in the wake...

“We had our first meeting over Zoom,” recalls Mark Bridges, the two-time Oscar-winning costume designer, of speaking with Steven Spielberg about his being in charge of costuming for “The Fabelmans.” “One of the most exciting/intimidating things he said to me during that conversation was that his mother had a very unique personal style. I was immediately curious as to what that personal style might be.” Bridges would find out soon enough, as he created the characters’ look for Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical Amblin Entertainment feature. It would prove to be both a professional challenge and a great creative achievement for a designer who won Academy Awards for “The Artist” in 2012 and “Phantom Thread” in 2018, and who has served as costume designer for eight movies nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. Watch our exclusive video interview above.

It’s Bridges’s first collaboration with Spielberg, but hardly his first time faced with costuming a period film.

Sam Fabelman (Gabriel Labelle) may be the protagonist of "The Fabelmans," but his parents Mitzi (Michelle Williams) and Burt (Paul Dano) are just as important. The movie is a roman à clef of director Steven Spielberg's childhood, with Sam representing Steven himself while Williams and Dano's characters are his own late parents, Leah Adler and Arnold Spielberg.

What's most surprising about "The Fabelmans" is that it's one of Spielberg's less sentimental films. The script (written by Spielberg and Tony Kushner) is free of self-aggrandizement and even with the names changed, it's emotionally honest. Critic Roger Ebert called movies "machines that generate empathy" and watching "The Fabelmans," you feel Spielberg is telling this story so he can better understand his parents and what drove them apart.

Casting your own parents probably isn't an easy task; you know them intimately but they're also larger than life. Still, Michelle Williams rose to...

It must have been wild for Steven Spielberg to go from making home movies with his best friends to becoming one of the biggest names the industry has ever seen. So much of how movies are made, especially in the realm of blockbusters, can be attributed to his work, most notably on a little shark picture ("Jaws") that has traumatized folks to stay out of the water for generations. He could easily boast about his Academy Awards and box office records, but at heart, he's still the imaginative young kid who loved to make movies with whatever he could get his hands on.

Spielberg remembers where he came from, which makes a project like "The Fabelmans" feel extra special. It takes a lot to mine a swath of memories from your formative years for the world to see, but that's exactly what he does here -- and in top form too.

When it came to editing Steven Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical “The Fabelmans” (available to stream on PVOD), it didn’t matter to editors Michael Kahn and Sarah Broshar which story belonged to Spielberg and which to Sammy Fabelman, his onscreen alter ego. They merged into a single legendary tale, echoing John Ford’s “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,” which figures prominently in the film. What mattered most was capturing the authentic spirit of the director’s origin story, a dramatization of his uprooted childhood and parents’ divorce, his journey West to the Promised Land of Hollywood, and embrace of movies and filmmaking for escape and empowerment.

“It’s gotta be a real story about Steven and why he picks the movies he does, but this is quite clear why he picked this one,” Kahn told IndieWire. He’s cut every Spielberg movie since 1977’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,...

“The Fabelmans” is billed as Steven Spielberg’s most autobiographical film to date, though viewers who’ve followed the director’s career closely have already absorbed plenty of his life story. Whether or not Spielberg was always aware of this is another question. Recall his episode of “Inside the Actor’s Studio,” in which host James Lipton catches Spielberg off-guard with an observation about “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”: A child of divorce, the son of concert pianist Leah Adler and data processing pioneer Arnold Spielberg had made a movie where humans and extraterrestrials can communicate because “they make music on their computers.” “I’d love to say, ‘You know, I intended that, and I realize that was my mother and father,'” Spielberg tells Lipton, as he cracks a smile. “But not until this moment!”

The splintering of the family unit, characters chasing their dreams or venturing...

In Steven Spielberg's new semi-autobiographical film "The Fabelmans," Seth Rogen plays Benny, a character inspired by Spielberg's "favorite uncle." Benny lives with the Fabelman family and is genial, playful, and well-liked. He's certainly more charismatic than the family's stuffy patriarch, Burt (Paul Dano). The film's young protagonist, Sammy (Gabriel Labelle) is an aspiring filmmaker and idly spends a notable camping trip filming his family playing around. In so doing, Sammy captures many, many instances of Benny and his mother Mitzi (Michelle Williams) holding hands, touching intimately, clearly falling in love. The adoration between Benny and Mitzi will remain one of the film's central dramatic pivot points.

"The Fabelmans" is set in the 1950s and 1960s -- the time of Spielberg's childhood -- and the filmmaker's slavish attention to period detail is admirable. Part of that attention had Spielberg designing the costumes and makeup of his cast in such a...

Steven Spielberg has always proven to be something of an enigma. He’s not only the most commercially successful filmmaker of the past nearly half-century but also the most beloved. In point of fact, he is alone among movie producers and directors whose name elicits excitement, compassion, whimsy, longing, a sense of awe. He’s the cuddly teddy bear of cinema, a man we have come to see as the embodiment of our collective sense of childlike wonder. We identify no other creative as such a larger-than-life personality in his own right. Not even Scorsese or Tarantino can match the Spielberg reputation with the general public. He’s the guy who gave us “E.T.” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “Jurassic Park” and enough escapist thrills to leave us with the unmistakable impression that he’s family.

The paradox part comes in how little of himself Spielberg has permitted us to see.

Michelle Williams is now part of Steven Spielberg’s family for real.

The four-time Oscar-nominated actress revealed that “The Fabelmans” director Spielberg still sends her photos of his parents, Leah Adler and Arnold Spielberg, over a year after wrapping production on his autobiographical film. Williams plays Mitzi, based on Adler, while Paul Dano is Spielberg’s surrogate father as Burt Fabelman.

“We’re still talking about his parents. We were just texting about his parents,” Williams said during the MoMA Contenders series panel post-screening. “I am still getting family photos, things I have never seen, and the archives and the memories and the love.”

“The Fabelmans” production concluded in September 2021, with the film now opening in theaters November 11.

Williams shared that “there was nothing I couldn’t ask” Spielberg about his upbringing, while co-star Gabriel Labelle, who plays Spielberg’s insert Sammy Fabelman, added that everything in the film really happened to the auteur.

Acclaimed director Steven Spielberg is bearing all with his latest film The Fabelmans. A semi-autobiographical drama about his early days as an aspiring filmmaker in a family divided between creativity and objectivity, the film is a chance for the legendary auteur to open up to audiences about what made him such a force in the film industry. On the side of creativity and wonder came his mother Leah Adler, a skilled pianist and artist who encouraged Spielberg's creativity all while trying to harness her own. When Michelle Williams was asked to bring her to life as Mitzi Fabelman, she could hardly believe it.

While “Top Gun: Maverick” and “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” are expected to be Oscar craft juggernauts (“Avatar: The Way of Water” and “Babylon” are still Tbd), don’t discount Steven Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical “The Fabelmans” as a major contender as well. That’s because of its status as Best Picture frontrunner (winning the influential TIFF People’s Choice audience award) and great craftsmanship in recreating the celebrated director’s troubled coming-of-age in the ’50s and ’60s and his early brilliance as a filmmaker.

“The Fabelmans” is obviously special to its director: The tribute to his late parents — computer engineer Arnold Spielberg and concert pianist Leah Adler — is his most personal film to date. The fictionalized cinematic memoir is filtered through alter ego Sammy Fabelman (Gabriel Labelle), an aspiring director who falls very under the spell of the movies at an early age (when he’s played by Mateo Zoryon Francis-DeFord...

For “Spielberg,” an HBO documentary about the highest-grossing director in film history, director and producer Susan Lacy (“American Masters”) conducted 30-plus hours of interviews with Steven Spielberg. She also spoke to more than 80 of his family members, friends, and collaborators, among them Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Brian De Palma, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Robert Zemeckis, J.J. Abrams, Daniel Day-Lewis, Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hanks, Dustin Hoffman, Oprah Winfrey, Cate Blanchett, Drew Barrymore, and late “E.T. the Extra Terrestrial” screenwriter Melissa Mathison.

All of that makes for a long movie — it clocks at nearly two-and-a-half hours — but the documentary has its rewards. Here’s the highlights of Lacy’s look at the 70-year-old icon.

There was a pet monkey

“My mom was Peter Pan,” said Spielberg. “She was a sibling, not a parent.” Prior to Leah Adler’s death in February at 97, the longtime restaurateur told Lacy about the time she came across...

Patty Freedman, an actress who had a long and successful career as a publicist representing such clients as Margo Martindale and Eartha Kitt, died on Feb. 17 at her New York home. She was 64. Freedman, the co-owner of Andrew E. Freedman Public Relations, had been diagnosed with breast cancer. She spearheaded publicity campaigns for theater-specific accounts such as The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, Circle in the Square, where she served as a board member, The Bushnell, Yale School of Drama, where she also lectured, and Syracuse University. Also Read: Leah Adler, Steven Spielberg's Mother, Dies at 97 In addition to Martindale and.

Steven Spielberg’s mother, Leah Adler, has died at the age of 97.

Adler died in Los Angeles, a spokesperson for Spielberg’s production company, Amblin Entertainment, confirmed to People.

The news of her passing was first reported by The Hollywood Reporter.

Famous for her Peter Pan-style cropped blonde hair and big personality, Adler (affectionately known as Lee Lee to her family and friends) was an artist, musician, restaurateur and, admittedly, a bit of a kook. “I’m certifiable, dolly,” Adler once told People. “If I weren’t so famous, they’d put me away.”

Spielberg and his mother had an especially close relationship,...

Steven Spielberg's mother, Leah Adler, passed away on February 21, according to a spokesperson for Spielberg’s production company, Amblin Partners. She was 97. The family has asked that in lieu of flowers, please make a donation to your favorite charity in Leah's name. Known as Lee Lee to her family and friends, Adler was born in Cincinnati, Ohio to Philip Posner and Jennie (Fridman) Posner. At an early age she developed a love of music when she learned piano, later…...

Leah Adler, the mother of three-time Academy Award-winning director Steven Spielberg, died Tuesday at the age of 97 at her Los Angeles home. Adler, a former concert pianist, was most recently the proprietor of the kosher restaurant The Milky Way on Los Angeles’ Pico Boulevard, which she opened with her second husband, the late Bernie Adler. She was also known around Hollywood for her sharp wit, which she wielded on red carpets and at her restaurant. “I told Steve, if I’d known how famous he was going to be, I’d have had my uterus bronzed,” Adler said in a 1994 Los.

Leah Adler, the mother of Steven Spielberg who fostered his interest in filmmaking, died Tuesday. She was 97.

Adler, a former concert pianist, died in Los Angeles, according to a spokesperson for Spielberg's production company, Amblin Entertainment.

Raised during the Roaring Twenties and the Depression with her older brother Bernard, Adler developed a love of music when she learned piano at the age of 5. She later studied at the Music Conservatory in Cincinnati and graduated from the University of Cincinnati with a degree in Home Economics.

In February 1945, she married electrical engineer Arnold Meyer Spielberg and they had...

Steven Awalt – author interviewed by Todd Garbarini

“Well, it’s about time, Charlie!”

Dennis Weaver utters these words in my favorite Steven Spielberg film, Duel, a production that was originally commissioned by Universal Pictures as an Mow, industry shorthand for “movie of the week”, which aired on Saturday, November 13, 1971. The reviews were glowing; the film’s admirers greatly outweighed its detractors and it put Mr. Spielberg, arguably the most phenomenally successful director in the history of the medium, on a path to a career that would make any contemporary director green with envy. Followed by a spate of contractually obligated television outings, Duel would prove to be the springboard that would catapult Mr. Spielberg into the realm that he was shooting for since his youth: that of feature film directing. Duel would also land him in the court of Hollywood producers David Brown and Richard Zanuck and get him his...