Spike Lee

Shelton Jackson "Spike" Lee (born March 20, 1957) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, actor, and author.

His work has continually explored race relations, issues within the black community, the role of media in contemporary life, urban crime and poverty, and other political issues.

Lee has won numerous accolades for his work, including an Academy Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards, a BAFTA Award, and two Peabody Awards.

New York Times film critic A.O. Scott wrote that the film "ushered in (along with Jim Jarmusch's Stranger Than Paradise) the American independent film movement of the 1980s. It was also a groundbreaking film for African-American filmmakers and a welcome change in the representation of blacks in American cinema, depicting men and women of color not as pimps and whores, but as intelligent, upscale urbanites."

His production company, 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks, has produced more than 35 films since 1983.

In 1983, Lee premiered his first independent short film titled, Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads.

Lee submitted the film as his master's degree thesis at the Tisch School of the Arts.

Lee's classmates Ang Lee and Ernest R. Dickerson worked on the film as assistant director and cinematographer, respectively.

The film was the first student film to be showcased in Lincoln Center's New Directors New Films Festival.

Lee's father, Bill Lee, composed the score.

The film won a Student Academy Award.

In 1985, Lee began work on his first feature film, She's Gotta Have It.

The black-and-white film concerns a young woman (played by Tracy Camilla Johns) who is seeing three men, and the feelings this arrangement provokes.

The film was Lee's first feature-length film, and launched Lee's career.

Lee wrote, directed, produced, starred and edited the film with a budget of $175,000, he shot the film in two weeks.

He made his directorial debut with She's Gotta Have It (1986).

When the film was released in 1986, it grossed over $7 million at the U.S. box office.

He has since written and directed such films as School Daze (1988), Do the Right Thing (1989), Mo' Better Blues (1990), Jungle Fever (1991), Malcolm X (1992), Crooklyn (1994), Clockers (1995), 25th Hour (2002), Inside Man (2006), Chi-Raq (2015), BlacKkKlansman (2018) and Da 5 Bloods (2020).

Lee also acted in eleven of his feature films.

In 1989, Lee made perhaps his most seminal film, Do the Right Thing, which focused on a Brooklyn neighborhood's simmering racial tension on a hot summer day.

The film's cast included Lee, Danny Aiello, Bill Nunn, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Giancarlo Esposito, Rosie Perez, John Turturro, Martin Lawrence and Samuel L. Jackson.

The film gained critical acclaim as one of the best films of the year from film critics including both Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert who ranked the film as the best of 1989, and later in their top 10 films of the decade ( for Siskel and for Ebert).

Ebert later added the film to his list of The Great Movies.

To many people's surprise, the film was not nominated for Best Picture or Best Director at the Academy Awards.

The film only earned two Academy Award nominations for Best Original Screenplay, Spike Lee's first Oscar nomination, and for Best Supporting Actor for Danny Aiello.

He is also known for directing numerous documentary projects including the 4 Little Girls (1997), the HBO series When the Levees Broke (2006), the concert film American Utopia (2020), and NYC Epicenters 9/11→2021½ (2021).

His films have featured breakthrough performances from actors such as Denzel Washington, Laurence Fishburne, Samuel L. Jackson, Giancarlo Esposito, Rosie Perez, Delroy Lindo and John David Washington.

Lee's films Do the Right Thing, Bamboozled, Malcolm X, 4 Little Girls and She's Gotta Have It were each selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

He has received a Gala Tribute from the Film Society of Lincoln Center as well as the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize.

Shelton Jackson Lee was born in Atlanta, Georgia, the son of Jacqueline Carroll ( Shelton), a teacher of arts and black literature, and William James Edward Lee III, a jazz musician and composer.

He has also been honored with an Honorary BAFTA Award in 2002, an Honorary César in 2003, and the Academy Honorary Award in 2015.

Lee has five younger siblings, three of whom (Joie, David, and Cinqué) have worked in many different positions in Lee's films; a fourth, Christopher, died in 2014.

His youngest sibling is half-brother Arnold.

Director Malcolm D. Lee is his cousin.

When he was a child, the family moved from Atlanta to Brooklyn, New York.

His mother nicknamed him "Spike" during his childhood.

He attended John Dewey High School in Brooklyn's Gravesend neighborhood.

Lee enrolled in Morehouse College, a historically black college in Atlanta, where he made his first student film, Last Hustle in Brooklyn.

He took film courses at Clark Atlanta University and graduated with a B.A. in mass communication from Morehouse.

He did graduate work at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, where he earned a Master of Fine Arts in film and television.