The Oscar-winning film director Steven Spielberg has expressed his horror at the public rise of antisemitism, saying he has “never experienced this in my entire life,” especially in America.

In a wide-ranging discussion with late night talk show host Stephen Colbert, Spielberg, who has done as much behind the scenes as on screen to bolster Jewish identity, said: “Antisemitism has always been there. It’s either been just around the corner and slightly out of sight but always lurking or it has been much more overt, like in Germany in the 30s.

"But not since Germany in the 30s have I witnessed antisemitism no longer lurking, but standing proud with hands on hips, like Hitler and Mussolini. Kind of daring us to defy it.”

Spielberg, who established the Shoah Foundation, which took oral testimonies from hundreds of Holocaust survivors after he directed the seminal film Schindler’s List, was talking about his most recent film, The Fabelmans, an autobiographical coming-of-age feature film. In it, “Sammy Fabelman” — aka Steven Spielberg — suffers antisemitism and begins to make short films as his way of dealing with the issue.

Colbert asked Spielberg about present-day antisemitism. The director told him: “The marginalising of people that aren’t some kind of a majority race is something that has been creeping up on us for years and years and years — and somehow in 2014, 2015, 2016, hate has became a kind of membership to a club that has got more members than I ever thought is possible in America. And hate and antisemitism go hand-in-hand. You can’t separate one from the other.”

Nevertheless, Spielberg quoted Anne Frank’s famous line in her diary: “In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.” He, too, said he believed that attitude would prevail over hatred and antisemitism.

“I think she’s right,” Spielberg said about the young diarist before adding, “I think essentially at our core there is goodness and there is empathy.”