2014 Lincoln Leadership Prize Recipient

Steven Spielberg

Steven Spielberg, one of the entertainment industry’s most successful and influential filmmakers, is a principal partner of DreamWorks Studios. Among his myriad of honors, which include the prestigious Irving G. Thalberg Memorial and Cecil B. DeMille Awards, Mr. Spielberg is a three-time Academy Award® winner having received Oscars®, for Best Director and Best Picture, for the internationally lauded “Schindler’s List,” which received seven Oscars® and a third Academy Award®, for Best Director, for the World War II drama “Saving Private Ryan,” which earned four additional Oscars®.

In 2012, Spielberg directed Academy Award winner Daniel Day-Lewis in “Lincoln,” based in-part on Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “Team of Rivals,” with a screenplay by Tony Kushner. The film garnered 12 Academy Award nominations winning two Oscars, including Daniel Day-Lewis’ third Oscar for Best Actor playing the iconic 16th President, as well as Best Production Design.

With a history of addressing socially relevant issues, Mr. Spielberg brings films to audiences that reflect on humanity’s moral failings and oftentimes their indifference to issues such as human rights in films like “Lincoln,” “Amistad,” “The Color Purple,” “Schindler’s List,” or war and terrorism in films and TV like “Saving Private Ryan,” “War Horse,” “Munich,” “Band of Brothers,” and “The Pacific.” His films focus on individual courage and celebrate the resiliency of the human spirit.

Mr. Spielberg also devotes his time and resources to many philanthropic causes, having established The Righteous Persons Foundation, as well as the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, now the USC Shoah Foundation. He is also Chairman Emeritus of the Starlight Children’s Foundation.