Steven Soderbergh

Steven Andrew Soderbergh (; born January 14, 1963) is an American film producer, director, screenwriter, cinematographer and editor. His indie drama Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989) won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and became a worldwide commercial success, making the then-26-year-old Soderbergh the youngest director to win the festival's top award. Film critic Roger Ebert dubbed Soderbergh the "poster boy of the Sundance generation". He is best known for directing critically acclaimed commercial Hollywood films including the crime comedy Out of Sight (1998), the biographical film Erin Brockovich (2000), the crime drama film Traffic (2000) (for which he won the Academy Award for Best Director), the 2001 remake of the comedy heist film Ocean's Eleven and its two sequels—known collectively as the Ocean's Trilogy, the medical thriller Contagion (2011) and the comedy-drama Magic Mike (2012). He has also directed smaller, less conventional works, such as the mystery thriller Kafka (1991); the experimental comedy film Schizopolis (1996), which has a non-linear narrative; Bubble (2005), which uses no script and non-professional actors; the experimental drama film The Girlfriend Experience (2009), which starred the then-active pornographic actress Sasha Grey; and the biopic about Marxist revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara, Che (2008). Soderbergh also directed, photographed and edited all episodes of the television drama The Knick. In addition, he has produced numerous film and television programs, and provided cinematography and editing on various projects. 2Early life and education Soderbergh was born on January 14, 1963, in Atlanta, Georgia, to Mary Ann (née Bernard) and Peter Andrew Soderbergh, who was a university administrator and educator. His father's ancestry was Swedish and Irish; his paternal grandfather was an emigrant from Stockholm. His mother was of Italian, and "a little Irish", descen