Biography for
Steven Soderbergh

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Steven Soderbergh was born on January 14, 1963, in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, the second of six children, and while still at a very young age, his family moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where his father, Peter Soderbergh, was a professor and the dean of the College of Education at Louisiana State University. While still in high school, around the age of 15, Soderbergh enrolled in the university's film animation class and began making short 16-millimeter films with second-hand equipment, one of which was the short film "Janitor." After graduating high school, he went to Hollywood, where he worked as a freelance editor. His time there was brief, and shortly after, he returned home and continued making short films and writing scripts.

His first major break was in 1986 when the rock group Yes assigned him to shoot a full-length concert film for the band, which eventually earned him a Grammy nomination for the video Yes: 9012 Live (1985) (V). Following this achievement, Soderbergh filmed Winston (1987), the short-subject film that he would later expand into Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989), a film that earned him the Cannes Film Festival's Palme d'Or Award, the Independent Spirit Award for Best Director, and an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay. Over the next six years, he was married to actress Betsy Brantley and had a daughter named Sarah who was born in 1990.

Also during this time, he made such films as Kafka (1991), King of the Hill (1993), Underneath (1995), and Gray's Anatomy (1996), which many believed to be disappointments. In 1998, Soderbergh made Out of Sight (1998), his most critically and commercially successful film since Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989). Then, in 2000, Soderbergh directed two major motion pictures that are now his most successful films to date: Erin Brockovich (2000) and Traffic (2000). These films were both nominated for Best Picture Oscars at the 2001 Academy Awards and gave him the first twin director Oscar nomination in almost 60 years and the first ever win. He won the Oscar for Best Director for Traffic (2000) at the 2001 Oscars.

Spouse

Trade Mark

Often casts Julia Roberts, Topher Grace, Don Cheadle, George Clooney, Eddie Jemison and Matt Damon.

Often works with producer Jerry Weintraub.

Use of ambient-music scores by Cliff Martinez.

Trivia

Father, Peter Soderbergh, was a professor and dean of the College of Education at Louisiana State University where Steven took some classes.

Frequently casts Peter Andrews, Don Cheadle, George Clooney, Matt Damon, Topher Grace, Luis Guzmán, Eddie Jemison and Julia Roberts and works with producer Jerry Weintraub.

Is of Swedish descent.

In 2001, became the first director for years to have twin Best Director Oscar nominations for Erin Brockovich (2000) and Traffic (2000).

Became the youngest winner ever of the Palme d'Or at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival for Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989), his feature film directorial debut.

Daughter Sarah Soderbergh (born in February 1990) with Betsy Brantley.

Elected first vice president of the Directors Guild of America in March 2002.

Ranked #39 in Premiere's 2003 annual Power 100 List. Had ranked #35 in 2002.

Together with friend George Clooney, who appeared in his movies Out of Sight (1998), Ocean's Eleven (2001), Solaris (2002) and Ocean's Twelve (2004), owns the production company "Section Eight Productions", which produced Christopher Nolan's Insomnia (2002/I), among other films.

Often acts as his own director of photography using the name "Peter Andrews," which is the first and middle name of his father.

Frequently casts Julia Roberts.

Member of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival in 2003

Was offered the chance to direct Quiz Show (1994), with Tim Robbins in the role of Charles Van Doren.

Has directed three actors to Oscar nominations: Julia Roberts, Albert Finney, and Benicio Del Toro. Roberts and Del Toro won the Best Actress and Best Supp. Actor Oscars, respectively, for Erin Brockovich (2000) and Traffic (2000).

He and his producing partner George Clooney decided to close down their production company, Section Eight, after six years of working together. [August 2006]

Was member of the dramatic jury at the Sundance Film Festival in 1990.

At one point, was interested in directing Fantastic Four (2005).

Personal Quotes

On DVD audio commentaries: "Would I, growing up, like to have had access to stuff on DVDs like this? Oh God, yeah! It's better than any film school, I think."

Well, I think a part of you has to be scared, it keeps you alert; otherwise you become complacent. So absolutely, I'm purposefully going after things and doing things that I'm not sure if it's going to come off or not. Certainly Full Frontal was one of those. That was pure experimentation, that's the kind of film that you make going in where you know that a lot of people are not going to like it because it's an exploration of the contract that exists between the film-maker and the audience and what happens when you violate that contract.

There are certain directors - Spielberg, David Fincher, John McTiernan - who sort of see things in three dimensions, and I was watching their films and sort of breaking them down to see how they laid sequences out, and how they paid attention to things like lens length, where the eyelines were, when the camera moved, how they cut, how they led your eye from one part of the frame to another.

...there've been a lot of questions about commercial films and non-commercial films, and I've never really made that separation in my mind. There's no question that when you read a piece of material, you have ideas about how it should be realised ... certainly when I read the script for Ocean's Eleven, I thought if this was realised the way it should, then it would appeal to a lot of people. Then you get involved in a film like Solaris and if you realise it the way it should be realised, then it won't appeal to a lot of people. But what are you going to do? You have to go at it...

I learned from Richard Lester that as your career goes on, you learn more about how things can go wrong, but you never learn how things can go right. And it's really disorienting.

On his decision to direct Out of Sight (1998): "It was a very conscious decision on my part to try and climb my way out of the arthouse ghetto, which can be as much of a trap as making blockbuster films. And I was very aware that at that point in my career, half the business was off limits to me."

If you're sitting around thinking what other people think about your work, you'll just become paralysed.

I'm not a world-class cinematographer, but the momentum and the closeness to the actors ... I'm so close to them that I can just whisper to them while we're in the middle of a take.

I'm process-driven, I'm not result-driven.

I find it hilarious that most of the stuff being written about movies is how conventional they are, and then you have people ... they are upset that something's not conventional.

This is a good moment to comment on the cottage industry that has sprung up around "How To" ... Screenwriting manuals. I think of this because Towne's script (Chinatown) is often cited as a great template (which it is) but, invariably, with no understanding or acknowledgment of the role film editing has in shaping a finished work. So any discussion that omits this issue shows a palpable lack of experience in the actual making of films on the part of the scriptwriting teacher/author.

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