Steven Spielberg reigns over Forbes’ most influential celebrity list

Spielberg dethrones last year’s top-ranked celebrity Oprah Winfrey in a list that is dominated by directors.

The verdict is in. Scoring a 47 for influence, director Steven Spielberg has been “clothed in immense power” by the United States population, according to the latest edition of the annual Forbes/E-Score list. By earning the title of the most influential celebrity in the US, he has dethroned last year’s top-ranked celebrity host Oprah Winfrey, according to forbes.com.

The 67-year-old director’s influence was amplified by his most recent historical drama Lincoln (2012), which earned 12 Oscar nominations (and two wins) and a whopping $275 million at the box office. Interestingly, a third of the earnings ($93 million) came from overseas, where is it even harder to sell an American period political drama about the back-room dealings and minutiae of 19th-century Washington politics, reported Reuters.

“A celebrity’s ‘Influential’ score represents how that person is perceived as influencing the public, their peers or both,” said Gerry Philpott, president of the E-Poll Market Research, which conducted the study for Forbes.

Winfrey, 59, who topped the list with 49 percent last year, dropped to 45 percent this year, which, according to Forbes, could be because she “is doing more behind the scenes to make her cable network OWN a success.”

Film director and Star Wars creator George Lucas ranked third despite working little in the public eye in recent times. “But with Star Wars about to get a new life, all the media and fanboy attention going to the world he created is keeping Lucas in the spotlight. The next iteration of the film is slated to hit theatres in 2015,” forbes.com reported.

Although director Ron Howard’s latest film Rush had a mediocre performance at the global box office, he secured the fourth spot on the list. Director Martin Scorsese, who got immense attention this year for his film The Wolf of Wall Street and for which actor Leonardo DiCaprio just won a Golden Globe, scored fifth.

Other high-ranking celebrities in the top ten of the list included television physician Mehmet Oz, ABC TV journalist Barbara Walters and U2 singer and activist Bono.

The E-Poll Market Research ranked more than 6,600 celebrities on 46 personality attributes. We, for one, are deeply influenced by the works of these phenomenal celebs.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 17^th, 2014.

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