Steven Andrew Soderbergh (; born January 14, 1963) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, cinematographer and editor. A pioneer of modern independent cinema, Soderbergh is an acclaimed and prolific filmmaker. Soderbergh's directorial-breakthrough indie drama Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989) lifted him into the public spotlight as a notable presence in the film industry. At 26, 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. His breakthrough led to success in Hollywood, where he directed the crime comedy Out of Sight (1998), the biopic Erin Brockovich (2000) and the crime drama Traffic (2000). For Traffic, he won the Academy Award for Best Director. He found further popular and critical success with the Ocean's trilogy and film franchise (2001–18); Che (2008); The Informant! (2009); Contagion (2011); Haywire (2011); Magic Mike (2012); Side Effects (2013); Logan Lucky (2017); Unsane (2018); Let Them All Talk (2020); No Sudden Move (2021); and Kimi (2022). His film career spans a multitude of genres, but his specialties are psychological, crime and heist films. His films have grossed over US$2.2 billion worldwide and garnered fourteen Academy Award nominations, winning five. Soderbergh's films often revolve around familiar concepts which are regularly used for big-budget Hollywood movies, but he routinely employs an avant-garde arthouse approach. They center on themes of shifting personal identities, vengeance, sexuality, morality and the human condition. His feature films are often distinctive in the realm of cinematography as a result of his having been influenced by avant-garde cinema, coupled with his use of unconventional film and camera formats. Many of Soderbergh's films are anchored by multi-dimensional storylines with plot twists, nonlinear storytelling, experimental sequencing, suspenseful soundscapes and third-person vantage points. Early life Soderbergh was born on January 14, 1963, in Atlanta, Georgia, to Mary Ann () and Peter Andrew Soderbergh, who was a university administrator and educator. He has Swedish, Irish, and Italian roots. Soderbergh's paternal grandfather immigrated to the U.S. from Stockholm. As a child, he moved with his family to Charlottesville, Virginia, where he lived during his adolescence, and then to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where his father became Dean of Education at Louisiana State University (LSU). Soderbergh discovered filmmaking as a teenager and directed short films with a Super 8 and 16 mm cameras. He attended the Louisiana State University Laboratory School for high