Film director, screenwriter, and producer, born in Modesto, California, USA. After injuring himself as a high-school car racer, he became interested in film-making, and at the Cinema School of the University of Southern California he made a prize-winning science fiction short, THX-1138 (1965). He became a protégé and assistant of Francis Ford Coppola, and was one of the cameramen on the documentary, Gimme Shelter (1970). He turned his student film, THX-1138, into a full-length film (1971), gained considerable recognition with American Graffiti (1973), then attained phenomenal success with the Star Wars series (1977, 1980, 1983, 1999, 2002, 2005). In 1975 he started Industrial Light and Magic, a company that creates special visual and audio effects for film and television. In 1997 the release of digitally enhanced versions of the original three Star Wars films was a huge box-office success. With virtually unlimited resources as a result of the success of his Star War films, he became increasingly involved in developing state-of-the-art special effects and in producing the works of other young film-makers.