Chris Columbus was born on 10 semptember 1958 in Spangler, Pennsylvania and raised in Champion, Ohio, the son of Mary Irene (née Puskar), a factory worker, and Alex Michael Columbus, an aluminum plant worker and coal miner. He graduated from John F. Kennedy High School in Warren, Ohio and went on to study at New York University's film school at the Tisch School of the Arts, where he was a schoolmate of writer/director Charlie Kaufman and Alec Baldwin. Columbus worked as a screenwriter with Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment, working on Gremlins (1984), The Goonies (1985) and Young Sherlock Holmes (1985). He wrote the first episodes of the animated series Galaxy High (1986) and later made his directorial debut with the teen comedy Adventures in Babysitting (1987) and Heartbreak Hotel (1988). His directorial work includes Home Alone (1990), Only the Lonely (1991), Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992), Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), Nine Months (1995), Stepmom (1998), Bicentennial Man (1999), Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001), Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002), Rent (2005), I Love You Beth Cooper (2009), Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (2010) and most recently Pixels (2015).