Steven Soderbergh

Steven Andrew Soderbergh ( SOH-dər-burg; born January 14, 1963) is an American filmmaker, cinematographer, and editor. A pioneer of modern independent cinema, Soderbergh later drew acclaim for formally inventive films made within the studio system.

Soderbergh's directorial breakthrough, the indie drama Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989), won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, as well numerous other accolades and was a worldwide commercial success. His next five films, including the critically lauded King of the Hill (1993), found limited commercial success. He pivoted into more mainstream fare with the crime comedy Out of Sight (1998), the biopic Erin Brockovich (2000), and the crime drama Traffic (2000), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Director.

Soderbergh found further popular and critical success with the Ocean's trilogy and film franchise (2001–2018), Che (2008), The Informant! (2009), Contagion (2011), Haywire (2011), the Magic Mike trilogy (2012–2023), Side Effects (2013), Behind the Candelabra (2013), Logan Lucky (2017), Unsane (2018), Let Them All Talk (2020), No Sudden Move (2021), Kimi (2022), Presence (2024), and Black Bag (2025). 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.