George Lucas

Early Life

George Lucas was born in 1944 in Modesto, California. His dad ran a store that sold office supplies and stationery, and the family lived a pretty ordinary small-town life. George wasn't a star student. He'd rather be out doing something with his hands than sitting in a classroom.

What he loved most was cars. Fast ones. He spent hours tinkering with engines and racing around, and he dreamed of becoming a professional race car driver someday.

From Cars to Cameras

Then came the crash. Just days before his high school graduation, George's car was hit by another vehicle and flipped over. He was thrown clear and survived, but barely. The accident left him shaken and forced him to think hard about what he wanted to do with his life.

Racing was off the table. So George went to college, and eventually he landed at the film school at the University of Southern California, known as USC. There he found something that grabbed him as much as cars once had. He fell in love with making movies.

Making Star Wars

After film school, George made two movies that got people's attention. THX 1138 was a strange, serious science-fiction story. American Graffiti, about teenagers cruising around in cars on a summer night, became a big hit and proved he could fill theaters.

But the idea George really wanted to make was a space story full of robots, aliens, and a war between good and evil. Lots of studios turned it down. They thought it sounded silly. When Star Wars finally came out in 1977, audiences lined up around the block to see it again and again.

Star Wars changed movies. It showed Hollywood that a fun, exciting space film could become one of the biggest hits ever made, and it launched toys, sequels, and fans all over the world.

Lucasfilm and Beyond

George had founded his own company, Lucasfilm, in 1971. To make the wild space battles in Star Wars look real, he built a special-effects company called Industrial Light & Magic, often shortened to ILM. Its artists invented new ways to put spaceships, monsters, and explosions on screen, and movie studios everywhere came knocking for their help.

He teamed up with his friend, the director Steven Spielberg, to create the Indiana Jones movies about a globe-trotting archaeologist who hunts for ancient treasures. The computer-graphics part of Lucasfilm grew so interesting that it was later sold off and became a company you've definitely heard of: Pixar.

In 2012, after decades of running the company, George sold Lucasfilm to Disney for about $4 billion. Star Wars lives on without him at the helm, but he's the one who dreamed it up.

What George Teaches Us

George's whole career turned on a moment that could have ended it. A crash that nearly killed him pushed him away from racing and toward a camera, and the world got Star Wars because of it.

He also kept going when nearly everyone told him his big idea was a waste of time. George believed in the story in his head, built the tools he needed to put it on screen, and trusted that other people would want to see it too.