61 Facts About Steven Soderbergh

Steven Andrew Soderbergh is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, cinematographer, and editor.

At 26, Steven Soderbergh became the youngest solo director to win the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and the film garnered worldwide commercial success, as well as numerous accolades.

Steven Soderbergh pivoted into more mainstream fare with the crime comedy Out of Sight, the biopic Erin Brockovich and the crime drama Traffic, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Director.

Steven Soderbergh's films have grossed over US$2.2 billion worldwide and garnered fourteen Academy Award nominations, winning five.

Many of Steven Soderbergh's films are anchored by multi-dimensional storylines with plot twists, nonlinear storytelling, experimental sequencing, suspenseful soundscapes, and third-person vantage points.

Steven Soderbergh was born on January 14,1963, in Atlanta, Georgia, to Mary Ann and Peter Andrew Steven Soderbergh, who was a university administrator and educator.

Steven Soderbergh attended the Louisiana State University Laboratory School for high school before graduating and moving to Hollywood to pursue professional filmmaking.

Steven Soderbergh has since called the film "dead on arrival" and described the making of it as his bottoming out.

Steven Soderbergh directed Schizopolis in 1996, a comedy which he starred in, wrote, composed and shot as well as directed.

Steven Soderbergh starred in Schizopolis as Fletcher Munson, a spokesman for a Scientology-esque lifestyle cult, and again as Dr Jeffrey Korchek, a dentist having an affair with Munson's wife.

Steven Soderbergh's reemergence began in 1998 with Out of Sight, a stylized adaptation of an Elmore Leonard novel, written by Scott Frank and starring George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez.

Steven Soderbergh followed up on the success of Out of Sight by making another crime caper, The Limey, from a screenplay by Lem Dobbs and starring actors Terence Stamp and Peter Fonda.

Steven Soderbergh ventured into his first biographical film since Kafka in 2000 when he directed Erin Brockovich, written by Susannah Grant and starring Julia Roberts in her Oscar-winning role as a single mother taking on industry in a civil action.

In late 2000, Steven Soderbergh released Traffic, a social drama written by Stephen Gaghan and featuring an ensemble cast.

Steven Soderbergh was awarded the Academy Award for Best Director for Traffic and received best director nominations at the year's Golden Globe and the Directors Guild of America Awards.

Steven Soderbergh directed Ocean's Twelve, a sequel to Ocean's Eleven, in 2004.

Steven Soderbergh next directed Ocean's Thirteen, which was released in June 2007 to further commercial success and increased critical acclaim.

Steven Soderbergh directed Che, which was released in theaters in two parts, titled The Argentine and Guerrilla, and was presented in the main competition of the 2008 Cannes Film Festival, on May 22.

Steven Soderbergh shot his feature film The Girlfriend Experience in New York in 2008.

Steven Soderbergh cast adult film star Sasha Grey as the film's lead actress to great reception and controversy.

Also in 2009, Steven Soderbergh shot a small improvised film with the cast of the play, The Last Time I Saw Michael Gregg, a comedy about a theatre company staging Chekhov's Three Sisters.

Steven Soderbergh has stated that he does not want it seen by the public, and only intended it for the cast.

Steven Soderbergh nearly filmed a feature adaptation of the baseball book Moneyball, starring Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill.

In 2010, Steven Soderbergh shot the action-thriller Haywire, starring Gina Carano, Ewan McGregor, Michael Fassbender and Channing Tatum which, though shot in early 2010, was not released until January 2012.

In 2010, Steven Soderbergh shot the epic virus thriller Contagion, another film written by Burns.

Steven Soderbergh premiered it at the 68th Venice Film Festival in Venice, Italy on September 3,2011, and released it to the general public six days later to commercial success and widespread critical acclaim.

In November 2011 Steven Soderbergh withdrew from the project due to budget and casting conflicts, and was eventually replaced by Guy Ritchie.

Steven Soderbergh's final televised project before heading into retirement was Behind the Candelabra.

On February 24,2014, Steven Soderbergh released a mash-up of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho and Gus Van Sant's 1998 shot-by-shot remake on his website, titled Psychos.

In September 2015, Steven Soderbergh was announced to be directing Mosaic, a series for HBO.

In February 2016, Steven Soderbergh officially came out of his retirement to direct a NASCAR heist film, Logan Lucky, starring Channing Tatum, Adam Driver, and Daniel Craig, among others.

In July 2017, it was revealed that Steven Soderbergh had secretly shot a horror film using iPhones titled Unsane, and starring Claire Foy and Juno Temple.

In 2018, Steven Soderbergh directed High Flying Bird, starring Andre Holland who played the role of a sports agent representing his rookie client with an intriguing and controversial business opportunity during an NBA lockout.

Also in July 2023, Steven Soderbergh debuted his science fiction web series Command Z, which is inspired by Kurt Andersen's 2020 book, Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America.

Steven Soderbergh filmed the 2025 spy thriller Black Bag, written by Kimi and Presence screenwriter David Koepp and starring Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender, from May to June 2024 in London.

Steven Soderbergh produced the Off-Broadway play The Fears, his first stage credit.

Steven Soderbergh shot his next film, The Christophers, a dark comedy from Full Circle writer Solomon, in London in early 2025.

Steven Soderbergh is known for tracking aesthetic transitions with a variety of colored washes, most notably yellow to symbolize open, socially acceptable situations while blue washes typically symbolize illegal or socially illicit endeavors.

In line with these washes, Steven Soderbergh is liberal in his usage of montages as he believes that they are equally important story-telling as dialogue.

Steven Soderbergh is known for having a combative relationship with Hollywood and the standards of studio filmmaking.

In Haywire, Steven Soderbergh cast and eventually launched the film career of professional mixed martial arts fighter Gina Carano.

Steven Soderbergh filmed the entirety of Unsane on an iPhone 7 Plus with its 4K digital camera using the app FiLMiC Pro.

Steven Soderbergh filmed with three rotating iPhones using a DJI stabiliser to hold the phone in place.

Steven Soderbergh then filmed the entirety of 2019's High Flying Bird on an iPhone 8.

When working with actors, Steven Soderbergh prefers to pursue a non-intrusive directorial style.

Richard Brody of The New Yorker stated that Steven Soderbergh is focused on the process of presenting ideas through film rather than their actual realization.

Money is central to many of his movies as Steven Soderbergh believes that it serves as an obsession unrivaled by any other.

Steven Soderbergh is generally said to have a cinematic niche in these types of films.

Steven Soderbergh has said that Peter Yates' 1972 crime-comedy The Hot Rock inspired the tone of the Ocean's films.

Steven Soderbergh listed Costa-Gavras's film, Z as an inspiration on his film Traffic and even stated that he: "wanted to make it like [Costa-Gavras]'s Z".

Steven Soderbergh has worked with various actors, composers, and screenwriters throughout his filmmaking career.

Steven Soderbergh has frequently relied on Jerry Weintraub to produce many of his films.

Steven Soderbergh rejected Holmes' score for his 2006 film The Good German, but brought him back for subsequent movies, most recently Logan Lucky.

Steven Soderbergh is a vocal proponent of the preservation of artistic merit in the face of Hollywood corporatism.

Steven Soderbergh believes that "cinema is under assault by the studios and, from what I can tell, with the full support of the audience".

Steven Soderbergh is not a fan of possessory credits, and prefers not to have his name front and center at the start of a film.

In 2009, Steven Soderbergh appeared before the US House Committee on Foreign Affairs, and "cited the French initiative in asking lawmakers to deputize the American film industry to pursue copyright pirates", indicating he supports anti-piracy laws and Internet regulation.

Steven Soderbergh married actress Betsy Brantley in 1989; the couple had a daughter together before their 1994 divorce.

Steven Soderbergh has been married to Jules Asner since 2003, whom he often credits for influencing his female characters.

Steven Soderbergh has a daughter, born in 2010, with a woman in Australia, where he was working during a separation from Asner.

Steven Soderbergh was nominated twice for Best Director for two separate films at the 73rd Academy Awards, the first occurrence of such an event since 1938.