Kate Capshaw

Capshaw was born Kathleen Sue Nail, the daughter of Edwin L. Nail (1933–1998) who was of Irish descent, an airline employee and Beverly (née Simon; 1933–2013).^[5][6]

She married marketing manager Robert Capshaw in January 1976 and they had one child, Jessica Capshaw, before divorcing in 1980.^[7] She kept the surname Capshaw, which she used for her professional name upon becoming an actress.

Capshaw moved to New York City to pursue her dream of acting, landing her first role on the soap opera The Edge of Night. After auditioning for a small role in A Little Sex, she was offered the role of the leading lady, which is when she asked for a dismissal from The Edge of Night. She starred in Dreamscape in 1984, and afterwards was directed by her then-boyfriend Armyan Bernstein in Windy City.^[8]

Capshaw met film director and future husband Steven Spielberg upon winning the female lead as Willie Scott in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), a prequel to Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). Capshaw starred opposite Harrison Ford, who played Indiana Jones. In addition, she appeared as Andie Bergstrom, an appealing and stern yet frustrated camp instructor in the 1986 film SpaceCamp, opposite Richard Gere and Gene Hackman in Power (1986), and starred as Susanna McKaskel in The Quick and The Dead (1987) with Sam Elliott. Capshaw also starred in the spy film/romance Her Secret Life.^[9]

Capshaw had roles in several films throughout the late 1980s into the 1990s. She starred alongside Michael Douglas and Andy García in Black Rain (1989), Sean Connery and Laurence Fishburne in Just Cause (1995), and Warren Beatty and Annette Bening in Love Affair (1994). She was also featured in the 1997 film The Alarmist with David Arquette and Stanley Tucci. In 1999, she starred in and produced The Love Letter.

In 2001, Capshaw starred in the television film A Girl Thing^[10] with Stockard Channing, Rebecca De Mornay and Elle Macpherson.^[11] It is her last acting role to date.

In 2009, Capshaw began studying visual arts, including drawing, painting, and portraiture. She focused on painting portraits of homeless youth, and in 2019, three of her works were selected as finalists in the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery’s Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition. These portraits were included in the exhibition The Outwin 2019: American Portraiture Today.^[12][13]

In 2024, Capshaw held a solo exhibition titled Kate Capshaw: Exclusive Tonsorial Services at the Pérez Art Museum Miami. The work was inspired by conversations with Sergei (Sirj) Grant, a local barber and community leader involved in financial education and youth advocacy in Miami-Dade County.^[14]

In 2022, the National Portrait Gallery commissioned Capshaw to a paint a portrait of Spielberg; accompanying the portrait will be a film of Spielberg’s work, curated by Capshaw, to be projected onto the portrait.^[15] The portrait and film will enter the National Portrait Gallery’s permanent collection after it is presented at the Portrait of a Nation gala in November 2025, where Spielberg is a 2025 Portrait of a Nation honoree.  The gala will remain on display through October 2026.^[16]

During the production of the film Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), Capshaw became close to director Steven Spielberg, whom she later married. Originally an Episcopalian, she converted to Judaism before marrying Spielberg on October 12, 1991.^[17][18] They were married in both a civil ceremony and an Orthodox ceremony.^[19]

There are seven children in the Spielberg–Capshaw family.

• Jessica Capshaw – daughter from Capshaw's previous marriage to Robert Capshaw
• Max Samuel Spielberg – son from Spielberg's previous marriage to actress Amy Irving
• Theo Spielberg – son adopted by Capshaw before her marriage to Spielberg, who later also adopted him^[20]
• Sasha Rebecca Spielberg
• Sawyer Spielberg
• Mikaela George Spielberg – adopted with Steven Spielberg^[21]
• Destry Spielberg^[22]