Director Steven Spielberg has dethroned media mogul Oprah Winfrey as the most influential celebrity in the United States, according to an annual study by Forbes magazine that was dominated by film directors.
Spielberg’s influence was boosted by his most recent film, Lincoln, which earned 12 Oscar nominations last year including best picture and best direction, and grossed US$275 million (NZ$330 million) at the global box office.
The magazine said the 67-year-old director’s ability to attract foreigners to a US drama about the back-room dealings and minutiae of 19th-century Washington politics spoke to his prowess. Lincoln grossed US$93 million in foreign markets.
Forbes said that 47 per cent of people surveyed rated Spielberg as influential.
“A celebrity’s ‘Influential’ score represents how that person is perceived as influencing the public, their peers, or both,” Gerry Philpott, president of E-Poll Market Research, which conducted the study for Forbes, told the magazine.
Winfrey, 59, who topped the list with 49 percent last year, slipped to 45 per cent this year, which Forbes said could be due to her retreat from the spotlight while running her cable television network OWN.
Film director and Star Wars creator George Lucas placed third despite working little in the public eye in recent years. He sold his Lucasfilm company to Walt Disney Co for US$4.05 billion in October 2012.
Directors Ron Howard and Martin Scorsese placed fourth and fifth on the list respectively.
Other high-ranking celebrities in the top 10 of the list included television physician Mehmet Oz, ABC TV journalist Barbara Walters and U2 singer and activist Bono.
E-Poll Market Research ranked more than 6600 celebrities on 46 personality attributes.
Forbes did not say how many people participated in the survey.
