One of the more successful filmmakers to "graduate" from the Spielberg School of Genre Moviemaking, Chris Columbus emerged as a specialist in combining a sensitivity for feelings of young people with a rousing adventure yarn. The only child of a coal miner father, Columbus sold his first script while still in college and went on to pen three highly imaginative and commercially popular films ("Gremlins" 1984; "The Goonies" 1985; "Young Sherlock Holmes" 1985) for producer Steven Spielberg before making a competent directorial debut with the engaging teen comedy "Adventures in Babysitting"
