Steven Spielberg Oscar wins: How many Academy Awards does he have and for what?

Jurassic Park, Jaws, E.T., Indiana Jones, the list goes on. More than 50 years have passed since Steven Spielberg’s debut feature and between that time he’s created some of the most iconic films in cinema history.

His vast filmography that spans from horror, to animated TV, to spy thriller, to every other genre and theme you can possibly imagine has won over the hearts of both critics and causal viewers alike. Chances are any person that you ask has seen a Spielberg film or property.

All that love and admiration has translated to success for the longtime director. He has of the most successful careers anyone in Hollywood has ever had. In total, Spielberg has amassed 316 nominations and 155 total awards (go figure, he’s below 50%). Possibly most impressive of all is that he’s tied for the third most Best Director nominations at the Academy Awards with Billy Wilder at 8. He trails only Martin Scorsese (9 nominations) and William Wyler (12 nominations).

This year, he’s in contention for another Best Director award for his film The Fablemans. It’s his most autobiographical film to date, intensely personal and full of heart about the director’s early life diving into his passion for filmmaking amidst his parent’s unraveling marriage.

Let’s take a look at the Oscars Spielberg has won throughout his career.

How many Academy Awards does Spielberg have and for what?

In his illustrious career, Spielberg has won three total Oscars, two for directing and one for Best Picture. His first Oscar win came in 1994, twenty years after his debut theatrical film release, The Sugarland Express. Spielberg ultimately won Best Director and Best Picture for his World War II historical drama Schindler’s List.

In his acceptance speech he joked that it was his first time holding the award and thanked a survivor of the Holocaust, Poldek Pfefferberg, who originally told the story of Oskar Schindler. He finally broke his Academy curse in arguably the most emotional film of his career.

Five years later Spielberg struck Academy glory again, winning Best Picture for his war epic Saving Private Ryan. Still one of the best depictions of World War II to date, it told the harrowing tale of a troop of soldiers venturing behind enemy lines to extract a Private and send him back home after his three brothers were killed in action. Never pulling its punches, its portrayal of loss, death, and trauma cast a long shadow over subsequent releases in the genre.

Interestingly enough, the films Spielberg is perhaps most known for, Jurassic Park and Jaws, didn’t generate him a Best Director nomination at the Academy. In 1976 Spielberg was so sure Jaws would sweep the nominations he had a cameraman film his reaction to the broadcast. If you skip to the 1:00 mark of the video you can see his shock to being snubbed. That era of the Academy thought the films were too “crowd pleasing” to earn top honors.

Of course, these snubs are historically in line with the way the Academy had always voted. No sci-fi or horror film has ever won best picture and prior to 2009 only three sci-fi films were ever nominated for Best Picture (Spielberg’s E.T. being one of the three). But the paradigm is finally starting to shift, movies like Avatar, Arrival, and Dune have changed the narrative putting the genre at the forefront of the ceremony.

The 2023 Academy Awards show might be the year where the genre finally pulls through. The A24 hit Everything Everywhere All at Once currently sits as the odds on favorite at -300 (if you’re not a gambling person, that’s a pretty heavy favorite).

Keep an eye on The Fabelmans this year as Spielberg has been nominated for another Oscar for Best Director. Who knows, he might add to his Oscar total and put another notch on his historic career.