Spike Lee Biography

The American producer Spike Lee was born Shelton Jackson Lee in 1957 in Atlanta, Georgia. Lee’s childhood was strongly influence by the arts: his father was a jazz composer and musician and his mother was a professor of literature. Shelton earned the nickname “Spike” as a child, and it stuck throughout his years growing up in Brooklyn, New York. After graduating from high school, Lee went on to study filmmaking at Morehouse College, Clark Atlanta University, and then later at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, where he earned an M.A. in Film & Television.

After teaching at Harvard and Tisch for a few years in the early 1990’s, Spike Lee began production on, She’s Gotta Have It, his first feature film. The film was highly success for an independent release, earning more than seven million dollars at the box office. But it was Lee’s second endeavor, the 1989 movie Do the Right Thing, that earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay and set the stage for a career which has since made Spike Lee one of the most prolific filmmakers of our time.

Since Do the Right Thing, Spike Lee has produced nearly forty films through 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks, the production company he established in the early 1980’s. Notable feature films and documentaries, many of which he wrote, directed, and produced, include: Malcolm X (1992), Clockers (1995), Girl 6 (1996), Get on the Bus (1996), 4 Little Girls (1997), Summer of Sam (1999), The Best Man (1999), Love & Basketball (2000), 25^th Hour (2002), Good Fences (2003), Inside Man (2006), When the Levees Broke (2007), Pariah (2011), and Red Hook Summer (2012.) The documentaries 4 Little Girls and When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts earned Lee Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Programming.

Spike Lee continues to make films which explore the nuances of race and social issues in America. His most recent documentary, Michael Jackson’s Journey from Motown to Off the Wall, was released in 2016.