Spike Lee
Biography
Shelton Jackson "Spike" Lee (born March 20, 1957) is an American filmmaker and actor. His work has continually explored race relations, issues within the black community, the role of media in contemporary life, urban crime and poverty, and other political issues. Lee received numerous accolades for his work, including an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards, and two Peabody Awards as well as nominations for three Golden Globe Awards and a Grammy Award.
Lee studied filmmaking at both Morehouse College and the New York University Tisch School of the Arts, where he directed his student film Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads (1983), which won a Student Academy Award. He later founded the production company 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks, where he has produced more than 35 films. He made his directorial debut with the comedy She's Gotta Have It (1986). He received widespread critical acclaim for the drama Do the Right Thing (1989), for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. He directed the historical epic Malcolm X (1992), earning the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival. With the biographical crime dramedy BlacKkKlansman (2018), he won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and the Cannes Film Festival Grand Prix Award.
He has also written and directed films such as School Daze (1988), Mo' Better Blues (1990), Jungle Fever (1991), Crooklyn (1994), Clockers (1995), Bamboozled (2000), 25th Hour (2002), Inside Man (2006), Chi-Raq (2015), Da 5 Bloods (2020), and Highest 2 Lowest (2025). Lee has also acted in eleven of his feature films. He is also known for directing numerous documentary projects, including 4 Little Girls (1997), which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film. He directed the HBO series When the Levees Broke (2006), which won two Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Directing for a Documentary/Nonfiction Program and Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking. He also directed the HBO documentary If God Is Willing and da Creek Don't Rise (2010) and the David Byrne concert film American Utopia (2020).
Most directed genres
Recurring actors
- Spike Lee 14
- Bill Nunn 6
- John Turturro 6
- Denzel Washington 5
- Thomas Jefferson Byrd 5
- Delroy Lindo 4
- Jim Brown 4
- Joie Lee 4
Awards and nominations
- 2024 American Society of Cinematographers Awards
- 2019 Academy Award for Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay
- 2019 BAFTA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay
- 2019 Academy Award for Best Picture Nominated
- 2019 Academy Award for Best Director Nominated
- 2019 Academy Award for Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay Nominated
- 2015 Academy Honorary Award
- 2006 George Polk Award
- 2003 Honorary César
- 2003 NAACP Image Award – Hall of Fame Award
- 1998 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film Nominated
- 1990 Academy Award for Best Writing, Original Screenplay Nominated
- — Primetime Emmy Award for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking
- — Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Documentary/Nonfiction Program
- — Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The career in numbers
- US$ 407 mi Total budget from 22 film(s) with data
- US$ 581 mi Total box office from 21 film(s) with data
- US$ 19 mi Average budget from 22 film(s) with data
- US$ 28 mi Average box office from 21 film(s) with data
- 6.6 Average rating from 32 film(s) with data
- 1.6× Return on investment from 20 film(s) with data
Budget and box office do not exist for every film in our records. Averages are computed over the films that carry the figure, and the count beside each one says how many.
