- Born
- Birth nameShelton Jackson Lee
- Height5′ 7″ (1.70 m)
- Spike Lee was born Shelton Jackson Lee on March 20, 1957, in Atlanta, Georgia. At a very young age, he moved from pre-civil rights Georgia, to Brooklyn, New York. Lee came from artistic, education-grounded background; his father was a jazz musician, and his mother, a schoolteacher. He attended school in Morehouse College in Atlanta and developed his film making skills at Clark Atlanta University. After graduating from Morehouse, Lee attended the Tisch School of Arts graduate film program. He made a controversial short, The Answer (1980), a reworking of D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915), a ten-minute film. Lee went on to produce a 45-minute film Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads (1983) which won a student Academy Award. In 1986, Spike Lee made the film, She's Gotta Have It (1986), a comedy about sexual relationships. The movie was made for $175,000, and earned $7 million at the box office, which launched his career and allowed him to found his own production company, 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks. His next movie was School Daze (1988), which was set at a historically black school, focused mostly on the conflict between the school and the Fraternities, of which he was a strong critic, portraying them as materialistic, irresponsible, and uncaring. With his School Daze (1988) profits, Lee went on to make his landmark film, Do the Right Thing (1989), a movie based specifically his own neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. The movie portrayed the racial tensions that emerge in the Bed-Stuy neighborhood on one very hot day. The movie garnered Oscar nominations for Best Original Screenplay, for Danny Aiello for supporting actor, and sparked a debate on racial relations. Lee went on to produce and direct the jazz biopic Mo' Better Blues (1990), the first of many Spike Lee films to feature Denzel Washington, including the biography of Malcolm X (1992), in which Washington portrayed the civil rights leader. The movie was a success, and garnered an Oscar nomination for Washington. The pair would work together again on He Got Game (1998), an excursion into the collegiate world showing the darker side of college athletic recruiting, as well as the 2006 film Inside Man (2006). Spike Lee's role as a documentarian has expanded over the years, highlighted by his participation in Lumière and Company (1995), the Oscar-nominated 4 Little Girls (1997), to his Peabody Award-winning biographical adaptation of Black Panther leader in A Huey P. Newton Story (2001), through his 2005 Emmy Award-winning examination of post-Katrina New Orleans in When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts (2006) and its follow-up five years later If God Is Willing and da Creek Don't Rise (2010). Through his production company 40 Acres and A Mule Filmworks, Lee continues to create and direct both independent films and projects for major studios, as well as working on story development, creating an internship program for aspiring filmmakers, releasing music, and community outreach and support. He is married to Tonya Lewis Lee, and they have two sons, Satchel and Jackson.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Scott msa0510@mail.ecu.edu
- SpouseTonya Lewis Lee(October 2, 1993 - present) (2 children)
- Children
- ParentsJacquelyn Lee
- RelativesMalcolm D. Lee(Cousin)Joie Lee(Sibling)Cinqué Lee(Sibling)David Lee(Sibling)Zimmie Shelton(Grandparent)Consuela Lee Morehead(Aunt or Uncle)Cliff Lee(Aunt or Uncle)Baron Davis(Cousin)
- Frequently casts himself
- Frequently casts John Turturro, Samuel L. Jackson, Delroy Lindo, Kim Director and Roger Guenveur Smith
- His films frequently involve African Americans and African-American themes
- Films called "A Spike Lee Joint"
- Frequently has characters directly address the camera. Frequently places actors on dollies to achieve a gliding or rotating effect against the background of the shot.
- His favorite movie is The Deer Hunter (1978). It is the movie that inspired him to be a director.
- His grandmother, Zimmie Shelton, helped fund his first full-length feature film, She's Gotta Have It (1986).
- One of his classmate at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts was director Ang Lee. The Taiwan-born Lee worked on the crew of Spike's thesis film, Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads (1983).
- Vied for the director's seat on Ali (2001). Says that he knew he wouldn't get the job after speaking to the movie's star, Will Smith (one of the many financiers on Lee's Get on the Bus (1996)), who wanted Lee to make a film with "a broader appeal".
- Has directed 3 actors to Oscar-nominated performances: Danny Aiello, Denzel Washington, and Adam Driver.
- I've been blessed with the opportunity to express the views of black people who otherwise don't have access to power and the media. I have to take advantage of that while I'm still bankable.
- What's the difference between Hollywood characters and my characters? Mine are real.
- Making films has got to be one of the hardest endeavors known to humankind. Straight up and down, film work is hard shit.
- [after Do the Right Thing (1989) lost out on the Palme d'Or to Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989) at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival] Wim Wenders had better watch out 'cause I'm waiting for his ass. Somewhere deep in my closet I have a Louisville Slugger bat with Wenders' name on it.
- "I respect the audience's intelligence a lot, and that's why I don't try to go for the lowest common denominator." -- at the New York premiere of his media satire "Bamboozled".
- Malcolm X (1992) - $3,000,000
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