3. Few of us could swim in the ocean comfortably after seeing filmmaker Steven Spielberg’s terrifying movie Jaws. In his hit movie E.T. the Extraterrestrial, Spielberg created a sweet, funny film about a being from outer space. In 1985, he gave us The Color Purple, a moving picture about a black family in the South that earned him a Best Director nomination. Steven Spielberg has created some of the most successful and popular films of the 1970s and 1980s.