George Lucas

George Lucas
George Walton Lucas, Jr.
Birthday	Sunday, May 14, 1944
Birthplace	Modesto, California, U.S.
Nationality	American
Occupation	Chairman & CEO of Lucasfilm
Education	Modesto Junior College

Lucas, George

(1945–  ) movie director/producer; born in Modesto, Calif. After injuring himself as a high school car racer, he became interested in moviemaking and at the Cinema School of the University of Southern California he made a prize-winning science fiction short, THX-1138 (1965). He became a protégé and assistant of Francis Ford Coppola and was one of the cameramen on the documentary, Gimme Shelter (1970). He turned his student film, THX-1138, into a full-length movie (1971), gained considerable recognition with American Graffiti (1973), and then attained phenomenal success with Star Wars (1977), the first of a series of science fiction films. With virtually unlimited resources as a result of the success of his Star War movies, he became increasingly involved in developing state-of-the-art special effects and in producing the works of other young filmmakers.

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.