Steven Spielberg made a name for himself by capturing America’s collective imagination, looking toward the sky (“E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”), sea (“Jaws”) and everywhere in between to craft iconic characters. But in recent years, Spielberg has shifted his focus to the history books.

During a college press conference call, which included Student Life, Spielberg recalled, “All of my movies have really been about the characters. But throughout, my earlier concepts or big notions for movies in the ’70s and ’80s sometimes upstaged the characters that were really making those stories believable…A lot of credit was going just for the concept.

“My feeling today as I’ve gotten older [is that] the concepts have maybe gotten smaller. They’ve only gotten smaller because the characters have gotten bigger, and I’m much more interested in focusing my attention on really interesting people like the character of Rudolf Abel and the character of James Donovan,” he said.

Donovan and Abel form the core of his most recent film, “Bridge of Spies,” which marks his third consecutive foray into historical drama, following 2011’s “War Horse” and 2012’s “Lincoln.” Donovan was an insurance lawyer tasked with defending Abel, a Soviet spy, in the early 1960s. After an American fighter pilot (Francis Powers) and economics student (Frederic Pryor) were captured by the Soviet Union and East Germany, respectively, Donovan negotiated a trade for the American prisoners.

Though the specific tensions of the Cold War may be distant history, Spielberg identifies parallels between the Cold War and modern cybersecurity threats that give the film an extra layer of resonance.

“There’s a lot of things about the movie that are relevant today,” he said. “The movie is about spy craft. It’s about the art of conversation, the art of negotiation, but it’s also about spying, and today there’s tons of things going on. In the ’50s we flew U2s over the Soviet Union, and today, we’re flying drones everywhere. And we were spying on each other all through the ’50s and ’60s, and today we have a great deal of cyber hacking, which is a form of espionage.”

The film also presents contrasts to our modern political climate. Whereas Congress currently runs on vitriol and chaos, Spielberg admires Donovan’s even temper.

“I just find that Donovan…is a great example of what we need more of today, not only in the diplomatic world, but on Capitol Hill, and just the way people should be more patient with each other in trying to figure out or trying to celebrate what makes us different and not being so quick to judge someone who is not the same as us,” Spielberg said.

And who better to play Donovan than Tom Hanks, who has made a career of endearing himself to audiences through a natural charm and quick wit. This marks the fourth collaboration between Hanks and Spielberg, and, as always, Spielberg remains in awe of Hanks’ ability to fully inhabit his characters.

“Tom is an honest actor, which means that he doesn’t have to act,” Spielberg said. “If he understands the character, he exists in the clothing and in the persona of that character without having to work very hard. It doesn’t mean he’s not a hard worker. It just means when Tom knows a character, he becomes that person.”

The presence of talented actors like Hanks and Mark Rylance, who plays Abel, becomes essential when retelling history. Since Spielberg tends to, at the least, stick to the broad outlines of historical fact, he has less freedom to shape the story as he pleases.

“It’s a lot easier telling stories that are pure fiction, because I can just let my imagination run away with me, and I’ll just follow my imagination to the end of the project,” he admitted. But when I’m making movies about history or about real people in that history, it limits my imagination and my imagination turns more toward where I should put the camera to make the scenes cinematic.”

Another challenge comes in the potential that audiences may be familiar with the story’s arc going into the film. Spielberg recognizes the importance of translating these stories into compelling cinematic experiences and believes in the power of cinema to temporarily erase prior knowledge.

“A movie casts a spell. All movies cast spells,” he insisted. “Not just my movies, but every movie casts a spell and all audiences. If they get involved enough in the characters and the story, they suspend their disbelief, and part of that suspension of disbelief means cancelling what you know about what really happened in the world.”

Encouraging this temporary ignorance presents a set of obstacles Spielberg didn’t have to confront in his genre fiction heyday. But Spielberg continues to seek new challenges four decades into his directing career, despite the hesitations of those around him.

“I love people challenging me [about the stories I choose], because it’s a real test [of] my own convictions. And the more I can stand up, the more I can…take a stand on a subject that may not be popular, but I see it in a certain way that I would be proud to add that film to the body of my work. That’s pretty much the litmus test that gets me to say, ‘Yeah, I’ll direct that one.’”

While you could forgive an artist of Spielberg’s stature for taking his foot off of the pedal after building one of the most revered filmographies in cinema’s history, it doesn’t seem like he’ll be admitting defeat anytime soon.