Academy Award-winning producer Steve Starkey is a longtime collaborator with legendary filmmaker Robert Zemeckis. After producing Death Becomes Her (1992), his first film with Zemeckis, Starkey went on to produce and win the Academy Award for Best Picture on the film Forrest Gump (1994). Following their film Contact, Zemeckis and Starkey formed the company ImageMovers with agent Jack Rapke, and produced a diverse slate of films including What Lies Beneath, Cast Away, The Polar Express, and Flight. Starkey is also the author of Breaking and Entering: The Education of a Film Producer (2022) and Stupid Is as Stupid Does (2024). Starkey graduated from UC Berkeley with a BA in Humanities in 1975.
Steve Starkey’s film career began when he snuck onto a movie lot. He had recently graduated from Berkeley. He knew he wanted to work in film but had absolutely no connections in the industry. So one day, he hopped on an employee shuttle to the Universal Studios lot and struck up conversations with the people he met there. He connected with an electrician over a shared love of basketball, and when there was an opening for an entry-level electrician, Starkey was hired for the role.
Starkey described these experiences to a roomful of students as he spoke with Professor Catherine Flynn in HUM20 “Humanities in Action: Alumni Career Conversations.”
He explained that his passion for film was born at Berkeley. Although he initially planned to major in astronomy, he was drawn to the humanities major for its interdisciplinary foundation. Since Berkeley didn’t offer a film degree at the time, a humanities major gave him the flexibility to explore cinema from his own perspective, connecting the films he saw at BAMPFA with literature, history, and philosophy. He ended up studying existentialism in literature and film, and credits the humanities major with giving him “the opportunity and the courage to follow this new-found passion.”
Once he was working on movie sets, his studies at Berkeley helped him feel at ease in conversations around filmmaking. His time in humanities classrooms had trained him to express himself as an independent thinker. “My education prepared me to enter the world of cinema, where you're talking about how stories are told through writing and editing.”
From his start as an electrician, he moved on to work as a production assistant for an up-and-coming company called Lucasfilm. He tried his hand at film editing before refocusing on production. In those early days he sometimes envied film school graduates who had formal training in screenwriting, editing, and other core skills. But thanks to his ability to connect with people and his willingness to ask questions and rely on the expertise of others, he quickly integrated their knowledge into his own. “I had to just be quiet, listen and learn.“
The 1992 dark comedy Death Becomes Her was the first film that Starkey produced with Academy-Award winning director Robert Zemeckis. Their next film together was Forrest Gump, which presented a wide array of production challenges. Filming took place in multiple locations, from Vietnam to the Deep South to shrimp boats. Digital editing to add Forrest Gump’s character to historical news footage was time-consuming. And Starkey was engaged in constant back-and-forth with the studio about budget, leading him to find creative solutions to getting costs approved.
Those decisions paid off when Forrest Gump won Best Picture in 1994, earning Starkey an Oscar. Starkey and Zemeckis went on to collaborate on a number of other mega-hits including Contact, Cast Away, The Polar Express, Flight, and Allied
Starkey described a producer’s work as bringing together all of the logistical elements needed to realize a vision. “Everything in my soul wants to accomplish that creative vision. The whole logistical thing: getting the camera, getting everything prepped, getting the costumes there on time, making sure the props are made, making sure you get the location permits. And you're looking over this whole thing with that one singular vision. You're driven by trying to get that image and get that scene.”