Steven Spielberg: I’ve never had the courage to tackle my story head on

Steven Spielberg says he “never had the courage” to tell his own story, brought to life in his new semi-autobiographical film, The Fabelmans, but is glad to have finally done it.

The multi-award winning director said he had told the story “in parts and parcels” throughout his lengthy career but had been “hiding” from it since he was a teenager.

The film, which stars Gabriel LaBelle, Paul Dano and Michelle Williams, won Spielberg best director at the 80th Golden Globe awards on Tuesday night.

It later went on to scoop one of the evening’s top prizes: best motion picture, drama.

Accepting the award for best director, Spielberg said: “I’ve been hiding from this story since I was 17-years-old.

“I put a lot of things in my way with this story. I told this story in parts and parcels all through my career but I never had the courage to hit the story head-on.”

He continued: “The fact that everybody sees me as a success story, and everybody sees all of us the way they perceive us – based on how they get the information…

“But nobody really knows who we are until we’re courageous enough to tell everyone of who we are, and I spent a lot of time trying to figure out when I could tell that story.

“I figured out when I was about 74-years-old, I said: ‘You better do it now’.

“So I’m really, really happy I did. Thank you, Hollywood Foreign Press for this honour.”

The Fabelmans tells the story of aspiring filmmaker Sammy Fabelman, 16, and features Michelle Williams as his mother Mitzi and Paul Dano as his father Burt.

The film documents Spielberg’s early years, with an official synopsis describing it as a coming-of-age story about “a young man’s discovery of a shattering family secret and an exploration of the power of movies to help us see the truth about each other and ourselves”.

Later, accepting the award for best drama motion picture, Spielberg thanked his entire production team, including producer Kristie Macosko Krieger.