Steven Spielberg can't stand to watch his own movies

Steven Spielberg often refuses to watch his own films until years after they're released to keep his mind sharp and focused.

The legendary filmmaker has spent over four decades in showbusiness making classic movies like Jaws, E.T.: The Extraterrestrial, The Color Purple, Lincoln, Jurassic Park and many others, but the three-time Academy Award-winning director doesn't bother viewing his own features onscreen when he's done with a project.

“I’m always moving really fast, and I don’t look back a lot,” he told The New York Times. “That’s why I don’t sit down and look at my movies on a movie screen after I’ve made them. Sometimes it’s years before I will even dare look at a movie again, and sometimes I’ll shut it off after five minutes.”

The 71-year-old mogul, who has amassed an estimated net worth of close to $4 billion, does everything he can to stay present and could care less about whether or not his movies are hits at the box office anymore.

“I’m really too busy, both in my private life and in my professional life, to have a lot of time to dwell on success or failure,” he explained.

Although Spielberg took on more lighthearted fun projects in his early career, such as classic family adventure film Raiders of the Lost Ark, he is now devoted to creating films with a deep social message, like his forthcoming film Ready Player One, a dystopian vision of the future with overcrowded slum cities.

“Now I feel a deeper responsibility to tell stories that have some kind of social meaning,” he shared. “If I have a choice between a movie that is 100 per cent for the audience and a movie that says something about the past, I will always choose history over popular culture. Even with all the popcorn in a film like ‘Ready Player One,’ it does still have social meaning.”