George Walton Lucas Jr. is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and entrepreneur who was born on May 14, 1944. Lucas is most known for co-founding Lucasfilm, LucasArts, and Industrial Light & Magic, as well as developing the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises. Before selling Lucasfilm to The Walt Disney Company in 2012, he served as its chairman.
Lucas co-founded American Zoetrope with filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola after graduating from the University of Southern California in 1967. Lucas created and directed THX 1138 (1971), which was based on his student film Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB, which was critically acclaimed but financially unsuccessful.
The film American Graffiti (1973), inspired by his boyhood in early 1960s Modesto, California, and produced by the newly formed Lucasfilm, was his next venture as a writer-director. The film got five Academy Award nominations, including Best Director and Best Picture, and was critically and economically successful.
George Lucas’s Net Worth
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George Lucas has a $10 billion net worth as a director, writer, producer, and businessman. He is most known for inventing the Star Wars and Indiana Jones film franchises, which have grossed more than $12 billion worldwide. He is also the founder of Lucasfilm, a production firm, and Industrial Light and Magic, a technological effects company.
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With a net worth of $10 billion, George Lucas is the richest celebrity in the world, the richest director, and the richest individual in the entertainment industry in general.
Lucas has signed the philanthropic “Giving Pledge,” pledging to donate at least half of his fortune to charity by the time he dies or at the time of his death.
Early Years and Professional Career
George Lucas, who was born and raised in Modesto, California, on May 14, 1944, had his heart set on a career in racing automobiles, but following a possibly fatal accident in high school in which he was broadsided by another motorist, Lucas’ priorities switched dramatically.
Lucas’s father had a stationery store and hoped that after George graduated from high school, he would work for him. George, on the other hand, wanted to go to art school and declared when he left home that he was going to be a millionaire by the age of 30.
Lucas became interested in photography and filmmaking while attending Modesto Junior College. With an 8 mm camera, he began capturing auto races and other material. He eventually transferred to the University of Southern California, where he met fellow filmmaker Steven Spielberg and received awards, including a Warner Brothers student scholarship, during his postgraduate studies.
Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB, a student film from 1967, was later adapted into THX 1138, his first full-length feature picture, released in 1971. Despite its bad reception, the film spawned a more successful sequel, American Graffiti, which received five Academy Award nominations and grossed $115 million domestically and $140 million globally. American Graffiti is regarded as one of the most profitable films in history, with a budget of $777,000 for production.
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Personal Life
Lucas married Marcia Lou Griffin, a film editor who won an Academy Award for her work on the original Star Wars picture, in 1969. In 1981, they adopted Amanda Lucas, and in 1983, they divorced. As a single father, Lucas adopted two more children: daughter Katie Lucas (born in 1988) and son Jett Lucas (born in 1993). His three eldest children, as well as Lucas himself, all appeared in the three Star Wars prequels. Lucas had a connection with singer Linda Ronstadt in the 1980s after his divorce.
George Lucas is married to one of my personal icons, a brilliant Black businesswoman, Mellody Hobson… I think about this pair of delightfully nerdy people and their individual and combined impact often. It’s pretty incredible… pic.twitter.com/DxejKDqb8i
— Angélique Roché is supposed to be writing (@AngeliqueRoche) February 24, 2022
In 2006, Lucas started dating Mellody Hobson, the president of Ariel Investments and the chair of DreamWorks Animation. Lucas and Hobson married on June 22, 2013, at Lucas’s Skywalker Ranch in Marin County, California, after announcing their engagement in January 2013. They have a daughter together, who was delivered in August 2013 via gestational carrier.
Assets in Real Estate
The roughly 6,000-acre Skywalker Ranch in Marin County, California, is George’s most valuable real estate asset. He bought the ranch in 1978 and has spent more than $100 million transforming it into a private house, movie studio, retreat, and 300-seat screening theatre. There’s also a 50,000-square-foot private residence on the site, as well as swimming pools, tennis courts, and other amenities. Approximately 5,000 acres of the property have been protected in a perpetual conservation easement with the Marin County Agricultural Land Trust.
He paid $33.9 million for a 9,000-square-foot mansion in Los Angeles’ Bel Air district in 2017. He bought a seaside mansion in Carpinteria, California, for $19.5 million in 2010. (just south of Santa Barbara). He demolished the old house and replaced it with a considerably larger Cape Cod-style dwelling.
George paid $28 million for the house next door in December 2019. Frances Morehart, who died in 2018 at the age of 93, was the previous owner of the property next door. In Carpinteria, his new combined beachfront footprint is over 3-acres.
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Accolades
Lucas earned The American Film Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005. He has received four Academy Award nominations, including Best Director and Best Writing for both American Graffiti and Star Wars. He got the Irving G. Thalberg Award from the Academy in 1991.
In 2006, he became only the second film, television, and media contributor after Steven Spielberg was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. President Barack Obama awarded Lucas the National Medal of Arts in 2013 for his contributions to American cinema. Lucas was named a Disney Legend in August 2015, and he was also honored at the Kennedy Center Honors later that year.