"My first 6 years in the business were hopeless. A lot of times I'd say, 'Why am I doing this?' That's why you have to find something that you love enough to be able to take risks, jump over hurdles, and break through the brick walls that are always going to be placed in front of you. If you don’t have that kind of feeling for what you’re doing, you’ll stop at the first giant hurdle.”
"You simply have to put one foot in front of the other and keep going. Put blinders on and plow right ahead."
- George Lucas
George Lucas
George Lucas was born May 14, 1944 in Modesto, California. His father ran a stationery store and owned a small walnut orchard. His mother was a member of a prominent Modesto family.
TEEN YEARS:
"I JUST SORT OF WANDERED AROUND"
... THEN EVERYTHING CHANGED
By his own admission, Lucas was a terrible student in high 
school. His teen years were completely devoted to cars, as he is shown here seated next to race car driver Allen Grant. “I just sort of wandered around,” Lucas later recalled. “I just wanted to be a car mechanic and to race cars. The idea of trying to make something out of my life wasn’t a priority.”
That all changed on June 12, 1962 when his much loved Bianchina car was broadsided while he tried to make a left turn into his driveway. The car rolled, the racing harness that he had installed snapped, and he was thrown from the car. Had the harness not snapped (and Lucas said it shouldn't have), he would most likely have been crushed to death by the steering column when the car smashed into a walnut tree. The force of the impact uprooted the tree.
Recalling the accident, Lucas said,
"The thing that the auto accident did, just as I was about to graduate, was to make me apply myself more because I realized more than anything else what a thin thread we hang on in life, and now I really wanted to make something out of my life. I had been in an accident that, in theory, no one could survive. So it was like, 'Well I’m here and everyday is now an extra day, so I’ve got to make the most of it.'”
FILM SCHOOL YEARS:
JUST TRYING TO SEE WHAT HE COULD DO
During his recovery, Lucas reevaluated his life and
decided to enroll at Modesto Junior College where he earned an AA degree. He then transferred to the University of Southern California’s School of Cinema-Television as an undergraduate and then later as a graduate student in film production.
Reflecting on his USC days, Lucas said:
"One of the most telling things about film school is you've got a lot of students wandering around saying, 'Oh, I wish I could make a movie.' You know, 'I can't get in this class. I can't get any this or that.' The first class I had was an animation class. It wasn't a production class. And in the animation class they gave us one minute of film to put onto the animation camera to operate it, to see how you could move left, move right, make it go up and down. I took that one minute of film and made it into a movie that won about 25 awards in every film festival in the world, and kind of changed the whole animation department. Meanwhile all the other guys were still going around saying, 'Oh, I wish I could make a movie. I wish I was in a production class.'"
In 1971, using San Francisco production studio American Zoetrope and long-time friend Francis Ford Coppola as executive producer, Lucas transformed his 1967 award winning student film into his first feature film, THX 1138.
FINDING SUCCESS
BY PUSHING THE BOUNDARIES OF STORYTELLING
In 1973 Lucas's second feature film, the low-budget American Graffiti, became the most successful film of its time and garnered the Golden Globe, the New York Film Critics, and National Society of Film Critics awards. Pushing the boundaries of storytelling into new directions, American Graffiti was the first film of its kind to tell multiple stories through interweaving narratives backed by a soundtrack of contemporary music.
It was Lucas's third film, Star Wars, that changed everything. A deceptively simple morality tale of good versus evil told across a fantastic landscape of exotic planets and bizarre creatures, Star Wars became an international phenomenon, despite the fact that few saw its potential during production. The 1977 film was followed by Empire Strikes Back in 1980 and Return of the Jedi in 1983 ... making up what is known as the initial Star Wars Trilogy.
In 1981, he created the classic adventure Indiana
Jones, co-writing and executive-producing the successful series consisting of Raiders of the Lost Ark in 1981, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom in 1984, and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade in 1989.
In October of 1994, Lucas started to write the three Star Wars prequels. In 1999 he released, Episode I: The Phantom Menace; in 2002 Episode II - Attack of the Clones; and in 2005 he released Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.
"A PURE INDEPENDENT"
George Lucas is one of the film industry’s most technically innovative, financially successful, and independent directors and producers. In fact, close friend and filmmaker Steven Spielberg has called Lucas "a pure independent," including where and how he lives. Lucas lives in the San Francisco area in Northern California, rejecting most of the traditional Hollywood lifestyle and institutions.
IN HIS OWN WORDS:
ADVICE FOR THOSE JUST STARTING OUT IN LIFE
In a recent interview for the Academy Of Achievement, George Lucas shared some thoughts gained from his long and distinguished film career.
On Finding Your Talent & Passion: “Everybody has talent, it's just a matter of moving around until
you've discovered what it is. A talent is a combination of something you love a great deal (something you can lose yourself in, can start at 9 in the morning, look up from your work and it's 10 o'clock at night), and something that you have a natural ability to do very well. And usually those two things go together.
A lot of people like to do certain things, but they're not that good at it. Keep going through the things that you like to do until you find something that you actually seem to be extremely good at. It can be anything. There's lots and lots of different things out there. It's a matter of moving around until you find the one for you, the niche that you fit into.”
On Needed Personal Characteristics: “If you want to be successful in a particular field of endeavor, I think working hard and perseverance are key qualities. You're not going to get anywhere without working extremely hard. No matter how easy it looks on the outside, it's a very, very difficult struggle.
You don't see the struggle part of a person's life. You only see the success they have. But I haven't met anybody here at the Academy or anywhere else that hasn't been able to describe years and years and years of very, very difficult struggle through the whole process of achieving anything whatsoever. And there's no way to get around that.
The secret is not to give up hope. It's very hard not to because if you're really doing something worthwhile, I think you will be pushed to the brink of hopelessness before you come through the other side. You just have to hang in through that."
[ For the entire Academy Of Achievement interview with George Lucas, click this link. ]