LUCAS, GEORGE

born May 14, 1944, Modesto, Calif., U.S. American motion-picture director, producer, and screenwriter who created several of the most popular films in history. Lucas became interested in filmmaking while in high school. He received encouragement from the cinematographer Haskell Wexler and gained admission to the film department of the University of Southern California (B.A., 1966). Lucas' first full-length feature film was THX 1138 (1971), a grim fantasy about a robotized, dehumanized society in the distant future. His second film, American Graffiti (1973), a sympathetic recollection of adolescent American life in the early 1960s, was a surprise success at the box office. Lucas spent the next four years writing and then shooting Star Wars (1977), an intergalactic swashbuckler with colourful characters, realistic extraterrestrial settings, and an array of breathtaking special effects. The film immediately achieved an astounding popularity and went on to become the largest-selling motion picture in history. Its success spawned a host of other science fiction films using the same newly developed computer-based special-effects technologies that Star Wars had used so effectively. Lucas served as executive producer of the other two episodes in the Star Wars saga, The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and The Return of the Jedi (1983), and of Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and the other two pictures in the Indiana Jones series directed by Steven Spielberg. Lucasfilm, Ltd., the production company Lucas formed in 197879, contains a number of divisions, including a special-effects division, Industrial Light & Magic. Additional reading Dale Pollock, Skywalking: The Life and Films of George Lucas (1983, reprinted 1990).