Steven Spielberg How I Caught My Mother's Affair On Camera

The cinema maestro was only 16 when his life changed after he filmed his mother flirting with his father's best friend. Six decades on, The Fabelmans director gets personal

- Jonathan Dean

When Steven Spielberg was 16 he found out that his mother was having an affair. He was on a camping trip with his three younger sisters, his father Arnold, his mother Leah and Bernie, Arnold’s best friend. As passionate about film-making as a teenager as he is now, Spielberg recorded everything on his Super 8. His camera caught a flirtatious moment between Leah and Bernie. It was the moment that changed his life.

“What was strange,” he recalls, “was I saw everything with my naked eye, but only believed it when I saw a frame around it later, on my editing machine.”

Spielberg’s mother would soon marry Bernie while Arnold, remarkably, took the blame for the divorce to protect Leah’s standing with her children—a noble act that led to many years of estrangement from his son. It’s a theme recurrent in so many Spielberg movies.

“I realised the power of cinema young,” he says. “That early film I made changed my relationship with my parents, especially my mother. That was how I found out about her affair. After that I no longer looked at her as a parent. I saw her as a human with all the vulnerabilities I saw in myself. I wish I could have had another ten years looking at my mum as my mum, but that secret brought us together. I was as close to my mother as I’ve been to anyone.”