Steven Spielberg says his late mother was “Kvelling” over his 2023 Golden Globes win for “Fabelmans”

Steven Spielberg accepts the award for Best Director for ‘The Fabelmans’ onstage at the 80th Annual Golden Globe Awards held at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 10, 2023 in Beverly Hills, California.

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Steven Spielberg won one for the family.

The 76-year-old filmmaker won Best Director for his semi-autobiographical film The Fabelmans at the Golden Globes on Tuesday, beating James Cameron (Avatar: The Way of Water), Baz Luhrmann (Elvis), Martin McDonagh (The Banshees of Inisherin) and Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (Everything Everywhere at Once). This is Spielberg’s 20th nomination and fourth win, including receiving the 2009 Cecil B. DeMille Award.

“I always say when I prep something, you know, it’s going to jinx it, so I never prep anything and I’m really, really happy about that,” Spielberg said upon accepting the honor. “But I… there are, I think… five people happier than me. There is my sister Anne, my sister Sue, my sister Nancy, my father Arnold and my mother. She’s up there talking about it right now. “

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Spielberg went on to explain how he hesitated for a while to tell the story of The Fabelmans due to his youth.

“I’ve been hiding from this story since I was 17,” he said. “I put a lot of things in the way of this story. I’ve told this story in bits and pieces throughout my career. ET has a lot to do with that story, Close Encounters has a lot to do with that story, but I never had the guts to address that story head-on until Tony Kushner, when we were working on Munich, which is a long time ago, sat me down and said, ‘Start telling me all these stories I’ve heard about your life.’ And we got talking.”

The three-time Oscar winner said his wife, actress Kate Capshaw, encouraged him to put these stories on paper.

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“My wife Kate always said, ‘You have to tell this story.’ And during COVID, I didn’t know if either of us would get another chance to tell one of our stories in March, April, May 2020,” Spielberg said. “So we sat down to tell a story and I did think everything I’ve done up to this point has made me ready to finally be honest, that it’s not easy being a kid, the fact that everyone sees me as… everyone sees me as a success story and everyone sees us all as he perceives us based on how he gets the information, but nobody really knows who we are until we’re brave enough to tell everyone who we are.

The story goes on

“And I’ve spent a lot of time figuring out when to tell that story. And I found out when I turned about 74 years old, I said, ‘You better do it now.’ “

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Spielberg directed and co-wrote The Fabelmans, which is inspired by his own childhood and stars Michelle Williams and Paul Dano as characters based on his parents. Spielberg’s mother Leah died in 2017 at the age of 97 and his father Arnold died in 2020 at the age of 103.

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter in November about his personal new film, Spielberg said his parents “annoyed” him about bringing it to the big screen before their deaths.

“They actually bugged me, ‘When are you going to tell this story about our family, Steve?’ And that was something they were very excited about,” he said.

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He also shared what eventually led him to do The Fabelmans: “I started thinking seriously about if I had to do a film that I haven’t done before, something I really do on a very personal, atomic level want, what would that be? And there was only one story I really wanted to tell.”

The 80th Golden Globe Awards will be broadcast live on Tuesday, January 10 at 8:00 p.m. ET on NBC and Peacock.