The 90-year-old filmmaker and producer, who also founded the Kennedy Center Honors, has carved out a life outside the shadow of his famed father, avoiding becoming known as the 'second-best film director” in the family.
, about the landmark Brown v. Board of Education.Stevens was on track to pursue a career in his father’s shadow. “It did occur to me that I was going to devote my life to becoming the second-best film director in my family,” says Stevens. But a 1962 encounter with Edward R. Murrow set him on a different course.
Stevens never left the family business behind entirely. He produced two Emmy-winning miniseries, 1988’s , with Sidney Poitier. Stevens later wrote the play— about the first African American Supreme Court Justice, Thurgood Marshall — with Poitier in mind. But when the actor confessed that he had grown too old to memorize the one-man show, Stevens took it to James Earl Jones, who performed the role at the Westport County Playhouse, and then to Laurence Fishburne, who took it to Broadway.
Given that his mother, actress Yvonne Howell, lived to 106, Stevens likely has several more chapters left to write. Recently, Stevens helped Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese bring forth a 4K restoration of his father’s magnum opus,Having watched Hollywood transform over nine decades, Stevens says he still has faith in the power and longevity of movies, despite prevailing headwinds: “My father was never overly admiring of the people who ran studios. And he used to say the only reason the movie business survives is because it’s indestructible.
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