STEVEN SODERBERGH Biography - Theater, Opera and Movie personalities

 
 

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STEVEN SODERBERGH

Name: Steven Andrew Soderbergh                                                           
Born: 14 January 1963 Atlanta, Georgia, United States                                   
                                                                                         
Steven Andrew Soderbergh (born January 14, 1963, in Atlanta, Georgia) is an             
American film producer, screenwriter, cinematographer, editor, and Academy Award-winning 
director.                                                                               
                                                                                         
Soderbergh was born to parents of Swedish ancestry (the family's original               
surname in Swedish, Söderberg, was changed to Soderbergh when they immigrated to       
the United States). When he was a child, his family moved from Atlanta to Baton         
Rouge, Louisiana, where his father became Dean of Education at Louisiana State           
University (LSU). There he discovered filmmaking as a teenager, directing short         
Super 8 mm films with equipment borrowed from LSU students.                             
                                                                                         
His primary high school education was at Louisiana State University Laboratory           
School, a K-12 school that is directed by the University. While still taking             
classes there around the age of fifteen, Soderbergh enrolled in the university's         
film animation class and began making short 16 mm films with secondhand                 
equipment. Rather than attending LSU, Soderbergh tried his luck in Hollywood             
after graduating from high school; he worked as a game show scorer and cue card         
holder to make ends meet, and eventually found work as a freelance film editor.         
His big break came when he directed the Grammy-nominated concert video 9012 Live         
for the rock band Yes in 1985.                                                           
                                                                                         
It wasn't until Soderbergh came back to Baton Rouge that he conceived the idea           
for sex, lies, and videotape (1989), which he wrote in only eight days. The             
independent film won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, became a               
worldwide commercial success and greatly contributed to the 1990s independent           
film revolution. At age 26, Soderbergh became the youngest director to win the           
festival's top award. Movie critic Roger Ebert dubbed Soderbergh the "poster             
boy of the Sundance generation".