Steven Spielberg Dedicates Award to Late Parents: 'They're Holding Hands Across the Stars Right Now'

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Steven Spielberg has only two people on his mind when it comes to The Fabelmans: his late parents, Leah and Arnold.

At the Palm Springs International Film Awards in Palm Springs, Calif. Thursday, Spielberg, 76, dedicated the ceremony's Vangard Award honor to his parents to end the gala event.

"So it has been a wild ride and for putting me on that ride, buckling me in and sending me on my way every day, I think with reverence and awe, an enormous gratitude of my very unique mother and father," the director told an audience of his inspiration for the movie.

"Leah and Arnold are The Fabelmans' presiding spirits and I know they'd be pleased with The Fabelmans," Spielberg continued. "Good Jewish boy that I am, that matters as much as anything to me."

"And I know they're holding hands across the stars right now watching The Fabelmans receive this lovely award," he added. "So once again, on behalf of our entire film family. Thank you all very much."

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Elsewhere in the director's acceptance speech, Spielberg offered the idea that The Fabelmans — a movie largely inspired by his own upbringing, with actors Paul Dano and Michelle Williams portraying characters based on his own parents — stands as his "first movie about coming home."

"So I kind of tell people all the time, you know that filmmaking is a collaborative art," Spielberg told an audience on Thursday. "And that's never been more true than it has been with his experience with this film. The cast and crew took the journey home with me to help me make my first movie about coming home."

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"It wasn't so easy telling a story that I've actually lived by returning to the memories, some of them painful, and then having to recreate and film them and taking a look at the family that formed me and that family that formed my work," Spielberg continued.

Ron Galella, Ltd./Ron Galella Collection via Getty Steven Spielberg (far right) with his parents in 1989

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"But I knew that if I was going to make this movie, I'd have to work very, very hard, just to keep it as honest and real as possible," he added. "And without the talent and commitment of this film family. I could never have put my real family on film."

Spielberg's mom Leah died in 2017 at 97 and his dad Arnold died in 2020 at 103.

As the film industry moves through awards season, The Fabelmans is nominated for five awards at the 2023 Golden Globe Awards and received 11 nominations at the upcoming Critics Choice Awards, second in total nominations at the latter ceremony only to Everything Everywhere All at Once.