On this day in 1962, teenager George Lucas survives a nearly fatal wreck after racing his car at top speed just two days before his high school graduation. An aspiring racecar driver before the accident, Lucas shifted his ambitions to filmmaking afterward.

Lucas was born in 1944 in Modesto, California, where he attended junior college for two years before starting film school at the University of Southern California. As a student project at USC, he made a science fiction film called THX-1138: 4EB, which won the National Student Film Festival in 1965.

Lucas' strong performance in film school won him the opportunity to observe production of Finian's Rainbow, directed by Francis Ford Coppola. He became the director's protÝgÝ and with his support made an expanded version of THX-1138, released in 1973, and American Graffiti (1973). Although Lucas made the latter for only $700,000, including his own $20,000 salary, it became an enormous success and later earned more than $55 million in rentals alone.

In 1969, Lucas married film editor Marci Griffin, who later won an Oscar for her editing work on Star Wars. The couple adopted a daughter but divorced in 1983. Lucas later adopted two more children.

Lucas spent three years developing his next project, Star Wars, which he wrote and directed. Although a simple good vs. evil story, the movie boasted groundbreaking special effects and became one of the most successful movies of all time. In a move unusual for the time, Lucas had held out for ancillary rights--like merchandizing and soundtrack rights--to his film, which proved extremely lucrative. In the 20 years following the release of Star Wars, Lucas sold more than $3 billion in licensed merchandise based on the movies.

After Star Wars, Lucas stopped directing and turned his attention to producing, although he consulted on the stories for Star Wars sequels The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983). In the 1980s, he produced the Indian Jones series, directed by Steven Spielberg, and explored less successful projects, including two projects with Jim Henson: Labyrinth (1986) and Willow (1988).

With the fortune he earned from his successful ventures, Lucas built a 2,500-acre ranch in Northern California, dubbed Skywalker Ranch, where a mock Victorian building houses many of his employees. His businesses include production company Lucasfilm, software company LucasArts Entertainment, and special effects shop Industrial Light and Magic, which created the groundbreaking effects for movies like Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park. In 1994, Lucas began working on the story for a second Star Wars trilogy. Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, was released in 1999, Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones in 2002, and Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith in 2005.