George Lucas

George Walton Lucas Jr. is an American filmmaker and entrepreneur best known as the creator of the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises and as the founder of Lucasfilm. One of the most commercially successful and influential filmmakers of his generation, Lucas helped define the modern Hollywood blockbuster and pioneered advances in visual effects, sound and digital filmmaking through the companies he built.

Early life

Lucas was born on May 14, 1944, in Modesto, California, and grew up in the surrounding farmland of the San Joaquin Valley. As a teenager he was passionate about cars and racing, an interest cut short by a serious automobile accident shortly before his high school graduation. He later enrolled at the University of Southern California's film school, where he developed an interest in experimental and documentary filmmaking and formed friendships with peers who would become collaborators, including Steven Spielberg.

Career

Lucas's feature debut, the dystopian science-fiction film THX 1138 (1971), grew out of a student short. He achieved wider success with American Graffiti (1973), a nostalgic coming-of-age film set among teenagers in early-1960s California that earned multiple Academy Award nominations. His next project, Star Wars (1977), became a cultural phenomenon, transforming the science-fiction genre and the economics of the film industry. To realize its effects, Lucas founded Industrial Light & Magic, which became a leading visual-effects house. He went on to oversee the original trilogy and, with Spielberg, co-created the Indiana Jones series beginning with Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981).

Beyond directing, Lucas built a business empire around Lucasfilm, establishing the THX sound standard and the computer-graphics division that was later spun off and became Pixar. He maintained tight creative and financial control over his franchises, financing and merchandising them in ways that reshaped industry norms.

Recent work

Lucas returned to directing with the Star Wars prequel trilogy, The Phantom Menace (1999), Attack of the Clones (2002) and Revenge of the Sith (2005), which leaned heavily on digital production techniques. In 2012 he sold Lucasfilm to The Walt Disney Company, a deal that handed stewardship of Star Wars to a new generation of filmmakers. Since stepping back from large-scale production, Lucas has devoted much of his attention to philanthropy and to the creation of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, a major institution dedicated to illustration, film and visual storytelling. He has received numerous lifetime honors recognizing his contributions to cinema and his role in advancing film technology.