Steven Andrew Soderbergh was born on January 14, 1963, in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, as the second of six children to Mary Ann (Bernard) and Peter Soderbergh, his father being of Swedish and Irish descent, and his mother of Italian ancestry.
At a young age, his family relocated to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where his father was a professor and the dean of the College of Education at Louisiana State University. While still in high school, around the age of 15, Soderbergh enrolled in the university's film animation class and began making short 16-millimeter films with second-hand equipment, one of which was the short film "Janitor".
After graduating high school, he went to Hollywood, where he worked as a freelance editor, but his time there was brief, and he soon returned home, continuing to make short films and write scripts.
