With his latest film, The Fabelmans, nominated for the Golden Globes and the Oscars, Steven Spielberg comes to mark a little more the history of the 7th art. This biopic traces the director’s youth and his first steps in the film industry. In the 80s, the director acquired a substantial real estate portfolio, which impresses as much as his filmography. These prosperous years propelled the prolific director to the forefront of the international scene. A look back at a meteoric rise that could almost be the subject of a…film by Spielberg.
Steven Spielberg is one of the great names in Hollywood, if not the greatest. After a fifty-year career, this is the first time the director has told his own life story on screen. With The Fabelmans (2022), he signs an intimate and touching autobiographical film, winner of the Golden Globes and nominated seven times for an Oscar. And that’s just the beginning. The film follows the lives of the Fabelmans, a modest Jewish family in 1950s America. We follow the story from Sammy’s (Gabriel LaBelle) point of view, from his early childhood inspirations to his first steps in the film industry.
Steven Spielberg has always been discreet about his private life. And his image was closely linked to the films he directed. But even if little is known about the hobbies of the director, his attraction to real estate has always been noticed. And the purchase of his properties as well as his films punctuates the filmmaker’s journey. “The only difference between renovating his house and making a movie is that for the house, I pay”, he said in an interview with AD US.
Over the years, Steven Spielberg has bought and sold several properties, from Malibu to New York, through East Hampton and Naples, Florida. Here is a brief review of the properties Steven Spielberg has acquired, as well as the most important films of his career up to the 90s.
1983 : residences in Manhattan and the Hamptons / E.T. and The Twilight Zone
After a first worldwide success in 1975 with Jaws, Steven Spielberg begins to make a name for himself in the world of cinema. He definitively confirmed his status as a world-class director with the release of E.T., the extraterrestrial in 1982. At the beginning of his career, he lives with his (first) wife Amy Irving between two properties : an apartment in Manhattan and a summer house in the Hamptons, northeast of Long Island, New York. The latter is part of a complex of 1.5 hectares, whose main property is an old Dutch barn of the eighteenth century. He renovated it with architect Charles Gwathmey and renamed the house Quelle Barn.
At the same time, Spielberg’s Manhattan apartment was on the 17th floor of the San Remo building, a coveted housing cooperative. But it is not known how much the director paid for this 557-square-meter home, with a breathtaking view of Central Park.
Spielberg alternated for several years between these two properties, and in 1983 released The Twilight Zone, a new achievement that will mark his filmography. The film tells the story of a retirement home, in which a certain Mr. Bloom teaches old people how to be children again, and they regain their former appearance.
1985 : a mansion in Pacific Palisades / The Color Purple
Steven Spielberg already owned two other houses in Los Angeles when he bought a magnificent property in Pacific Palisades, which then became his main residence. Indeed, his bachelor apartment in Coldwater Canyon and his beach house in Malibu were only intended to be occupied part-time. The new, much larger home was ideal for combining work and family life after the birth of her son. It is a stucco mansion of 930 square meters, with a tiled roof, located on a hill of 1.2 hectares overlooking the city. This time Spielberg hired architect Harry Newman to renovate parts of the property. He doubled the size to 1,858 square meters, installed a Hobbit-themed home theater, added a 530-hectoliter aquarium in the main bathroom, a guest house and an office. In 2013, a vineyard was even added to the property. Its value has been estimated at more than $100 million by the site Celebrity Net Worth.
The history of this mansion seduces Spielberg : among its former owners, we list Douglas Fairbanks Jr (actor), David O. Selznick (producer), and Bobby Vinton (singer).
The filmography of Spielberg, father for the first time, now addresses different topics, less oriented on the so-called entertainment cinema, and more focused on history. The Color Purple was released in the same year as the acquisition of his house, in 1985. The film tells the story of the painful life of a black family in the United States in the early to mid-twentieth century.
1989 : Two Houses in Malibu / Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
At this stage of his career, Steven Spielberg is now an established director. He had great success with the release of the first two Indiana Jones episodes, with Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984). With the release of a third installment in 1989, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the director still marks the cinema of the 80s, which is called the Spielberg era.
Unavoidable, and waiting for his ultimate consecration (which arrives in the 90s), Spielberg buys two houses located in Malibu. He bought the first one for 3.4 million dollars, then the second one in 2000, for 3.2 million dollars. The latter consists of two parcels of more than half a hectare, includes a main house of 672 square meters and a separate guest house. It has seven bedrooms and eight bathrooms, as well as a multimedia lounge with a fireplace, a dining room and a home cinema. The main living area, located on the second floor, has a beachfront terrace, massage room and private library. Steven Spielberg and his new wife, Kate Capshaw, would eventually sell it for $26 million in 2015.
Steven Spielberg’s real estate and filmography cannot be summarized in an exhaustive way. What about masterpieces such as Schindler’s List, The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, or Pentagon Papers ? The American director also acquired a new house in the East Hamptons in 2008, a 110-meter yacht in 2010, and a private jet. It is difficult to keep a precise list…
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