Shelton Jackson “Spike” Lee is an American film director, producer, writer, and actor. His estimated nett worth is $40 million. Since Oscar Micheaux’s groundbreaking work in the 1920s, African-American filmmakers have been a mainstay of the film industry, but none has had the same cultural or aesthetic influence as Spike Lee.
Lee has transformed the position of black talent in Hollywood as a writer, director, actor, producer, author, and businessperson. He has dismantled years of stereotypes and marginalised depictions to create a new space for African-American voices to be heard.
In addition to advancing the careers of actors like Denzel Washington, Wesley Snipes, Samuel L. Jackson, Angela Bassett, and Laurence Fishburne, his films—a series of outspoken and provocative socio-political critiques informed by an unwavering commitment towards challenging cultural assumptions not only about race but also about class and gender identity—solidified his own position as one of contemporary cinema’s most influential figures. Along the way, Lee even paved the way for upcoming black filmmakers like Albert Hughes and Allen Hughes, Matty Rich, Darnell Martin, John Singleton, and Ernest Dickerson (Lee’s former cinematographer). He was born Shelton Jackson Lee on March 20, 1957, in Atlanta, Georgia, and grew up in Brooklyn’s Fort Greene neighbourhood. His first love was sports; he was an avid supporter of the New York Knicks basketball team and initially wanted to play in the major leagues of baseball. Bill Lee, a jazz musician, was his father. The first time Lee’s love of movies came to light was while he was a student at Atlanta’s esteemed Morehouse College. After graduating with a degree in mass communications, Lee returned to New York and made his first film, 1977’s Last Hustle in Brooklyn, a portrait of the neighborhood’s Black and Puerto Rican communities captured with a Super-8 camera at the height of the disco craze. After Morehouse, he attended the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University where he received a Master of Fine Arts in film production.
His final film, Joe’s Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads, which premiered in 1982, was the first student production to be screened as part of Lincoln Center’s “New Directors, New Films” series. It also won the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Student Award. Joe’s Bed-Stuy Barbershop’s popularity prompted Lee to seek representation at the William Morris Agency, but as studio contracts remained elusive, he started looking into other independent financing options. The 1986 comedy She’s Gotta Have It, which won the Prix de Jeunesse at Cannes and made close to $9 million at the box office, was produced by him with 125,000 dollars after a string of failures. Soon, Hollywood began to beckon, and in 1988, he made his major studio breakthrough with School Daze, but it was his third movie, Do the Right Thing, released in 1989, that propelled Lee to the top of the American filmmaking scene.
STATISTICS
Source of Wealth:
Film
Age:
64
Birth Place:
Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.
Height:
5′ 6″ (1.68 m)
Full Name:
Shelton Jackson Lee
Nationality:
American
Date of Birth:
March 20, 1957
Ethnicity:
African American with Cameroonian, Nigerien roots
Occupation:
Actor, Director, Producer, Screenwriter
EARNINGS & FINANCIAL DATA
Earnings 2013
Earnings 2013Earnings from The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize which he won$300,000Earnings 1998
Asset 1998Value of his town home in Manhattan upon purchase$4,750,000Earnings 1992
Salary 1992Salary with Malcolm X$3,000,000
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