My favorite film directors

1. Charles Chaplin

Considered to be one of the most pivotal stars of the early days of Hollywood, Charlie Chaplin lived an interesting life both in his films and behind the camera. He is most recognized as an icon of the silent film era, often associated with his popular character, the Little Tramp; the man with the ...

The Great Dictator; Modern Times; Monsieur Verdoux; The Gold Rush; The Kid; A King in New York; Limelight;

2. Alfred Hitchcock

Director | Psycho

Alfred Joseph Hitchcock was born in Leytonstone, Essex, England. He was the son of Emma Jane (Whelan; 1863 - 1942) and East End greengrocer William Hitchcock (1862 - 1914). His parents were both of half English and half Irish ancestry. He had two older siblings, William Hitchcock (born 1890) and ...

Vertigo (1958); Psycho (1960); Rear Window (1954); 'Dial M for Murder' (1954); 'To Catch a Thief' (1955); 'Marnie' (1964); 'Frenzy' (1972)

3. Billy Wilder

Writer | The Apartment

Originally planning to become a lawyer, Billy Wilder abandoned that career in favor of working as a reporter for a Viennese newspaper, using this experience to move to Berlin, where he worked for the city's largest tabloid. He broke into films as a screenwriter in 1929 and wrote scripts for many ...

‘Some Like It Hot’ (1959); ‘Sunset Boulevard’ (1950); ‘The Seven Year Itch’ (1955); ‘Sabrina’ (1954); ‘The Apartment’ (1960)

4. Federico Fellini

Writer | Le notti di Cabiria

The women who both attracted and frightened him and an Italy dominated in his youth by Mussolini and Pope Pius XII - inspired the dreams that Fellini started recording in notebooks in the 1960s. Life and dreams were raw material for his films. His native Rimini and characters like Saraghina (the ...

'Amarcord' (1973); 'La Strada' (1954); 'La Dolce 'La Dolce Vita' (1960)

5. Stanley Kubrick

Director | 2001: A Space Odyssey

Stanley Kubrick was born in Manhattan, New York City, to Sadie Gertrude (Perveler) and Jacob Leonard Kubrick, a physician. His family were Jewish immigrants (from Austria, Romania, and Russia). Stanley was considered intelligent, despite poor grades at school. Hoping that a change of scenery would ...

The Shining (1980); A Clockwork Orange (1971); 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968); Lolita (1962); Eyes Wide Shut (1999); Spartacus (1960);

6. Roman Polanski

Director | Chinatown

Roman Polanski is a Polish film director, producer, writer and actor. Having made films in Poland, Britain, France and the USA, he is considered one of the few truly international filmmakers. Roman Polanski was born in Paris in 1933.

His parents returned to Poland from France in 1936, three years ...

The Pianist (2002); Rosemary’s Baby (1968); The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967); Frantic (1988); Death and the Maiden (1994); Tess (1980);

7. Nikita Mikhalkov

Actor | 12

Nikita Mikhalkov is the son of the famous communist poet Sergey Mikhalkov, who wrote the lyrics of the Soviet national anthem and had strong connections to the Communist Party. Nikita Mikhalkov's mother, Natalya Petrovna Konchalovskaya, was also a poet and daughter of famous painter Pyotr Petrovich...

Burnt by the Sun, 1994; The Barber of Siberia, 1998; Slave of Love, 1975; Unfinished Piece for Mechanical Piano, 1977; Dark Eyes, 1987

8. Emir Kusturica

Director | Underground

A Serbian film director. Born in 1954 in Sarajevo. Graduated in film directing at the prestigious Academy of Performing Arts (FAMU) in Prague in 1978. During his studies, he was awarded several times for his short movies including Guernica (1978), which took first prize at the Student's Film ...

Time of the Gypsies (1988); Black Cat, White Cat; Do You Remember Dolly Bell?; When Father Was Away on Business; Underground (1995)

9. Pedro Almodóvar

Writer | Hable con ella

The most internationally acclaimed Spanish filmmaker since Luis Buñuel was born in a small town (Calzada de Calatrava) in the impoverished Spanish region of La Mancha. He arrived in Madrid in 1968, and survived by selling used items in the flea-market called El Rastro. Almodóvar couldn't study ...

All About My Mother (1999); Volver (2006); Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1990); Parallel Mothers (2021); Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988); High Heels (1991); Kika (1993); The Skin I Live In (2011)

10. Brian De Palma

Director | Body Double

Brian De Palma is one of the well-known directors who spear-headed the new movement in Hollywood during the 1970s. He is known for his many films that go from violent pictures, to Hitchcock-like thrillers. Born on September 11, 1940, De Palma was born in Newark, New Jersey in an Italian-American ...

Scarface (1983); The Untouchables (1987); Mission: Impossible (1996); Carlito's Way (1993)

11. Steven Spielberg

Producer | Schindler's List

One of the most influential personalities in the history of cinema, Steven Spielberg is Hollywood's best known director and one of the wealthiest filmmakers in the world. He has an extraordinary number of commercially successful and critically acclaimed credits to his name, either as a director, ...

Schindler’s List; Catch Me If You Can; ET: The Extra-Terrestrial; Jaws (1975); Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom; The Color Purple

12. James Cameron

Writer | Avatar: The Way of Water

James Francis Cameron was born on August 16, 1954 in Kapuskasing, Ontario, Canada. He moved to the United States in 1971. The son of an engineer, he majored in physics at California State University before switching to English, and eventually dropping out. He then drove a truck to support his ...

Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991); Titanic (1997); The Terminator (1984); Aliens (1986); True Lies (1994); Avatar (2009);

13. Robert Altman

Director | Gosford Park

Robert Altman was born on February 20th, 1925 in Kansas City, Missouri, to B.C. (an insurance salesman) and Helen Altman. He entered St. Peters Catholic school at the age six, and spent a short time at a Catholic high school. From there, he went to Rockhurst High School. It was then that he started...

Short Cuts (1993); The Player (1992); Gosford Park (2001)

14. Sergio Leone

Writer | Once Upon a Time in America

Sergio Leone was virtually born into the cinema - he was the son of Roberto Roberti (A.K.A. Vincenzo Leone), one of Italy's cinema pioneers, and actress Bice Valerian. Leone entered films in his late teens, working as an assistant director to both Italian directors and U.S. directors working in ...

'The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly' (1966); 'Once Upon a Time in America' (1984); 'Once Upon a Time in the West' (1968); 'For a Few Dollars More' (1965); 'A Fistful of Dollars' (1964)

15. François Truffaut

Writer | La nuit américaine

French director François Truffaut began to assiduously go to the movies at age seven. He was also a great reader but not a good pupil. He left school at 14 and started working. In 1947, aged 15, he founded a film club and met André Bazin, a French critic, who became his protector. Bazin helped the ...

The 400 Blows (1959); Day for Night (1973); Jules and Jim (1962); Fahrenheit 451 (1966)

16. Francis Ford Coppola

Producer | Apocalypse Now

Francis Ford Coppola was born in 1939 in Detroit, Michigan, but grew up in a New York suburb in a creative, supportive Italian-American family. His father, Carmine Coppola, was a composer and musician. His mother, Italia Coppola (née Pennino), had been an actress. Francis Ford Coppola graduated ...

The Godfather (1972); The Godfather Part II (1974); Peggy Sue Got Married (1986); Apocalypse Now (1979)

17. Martin Scorsese

Producer | Killers of the Flower Moon

Martin Charles Scorsese was born on November 17, 1942 in Queens, New York City, to Catherine Scorsese (née Cappa) and Charles Scorsese, who both worked in Manhattan's garment district, and whose families both came from Palermo, Sicily. He was raised in the neighborhood of Little Italy, which later ...

Taxi Driver (1976); Raging Bull (1980); Goodfellas (1990); The Departed (2006) ; Hugo (2011) ; The Color of Money (1986); Gangs of New York (2002) ; After Hours (1985)

18. Milos Forman

Director | One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Milos Forman was born Jan Tomas Forman in Caslav, Czechoslovakia, to Anna (Svabova), who ran a summer hotel, and Rudolf Forman, a professor. During World War II, his parents were taken away by the Nazis, after being accused of participating in the underground resistance. His father died in ...

Amadeus 1984; One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest 1975; Hair (1979)

19. Richard Attenborough

Actor | Jurassic Park

Richard Attenborough, Baron Attenborough of Richmond-upon-Thames, was born in Cambridge, England, the son of Mary (née Clegg), a founding member of the Marriage Guidance Council, and Frederick Levi Attenborough, a scholar and academic administrator who was a don at Emmanuel College and wrote a ...

Gandhi (1982); Cry Freedom (1987); Shadowlands (1993); Young Winston (1972); Chaplin (1992)

20. Peter Weir

Director | Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World

Peter Weir was born on August 21, 1944 in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. He is a director and writer, known for Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003), The Way Back (2010) and Witness (1985). He has been married to Wendy Stites since 1966. They have two children.

The Truman Show (1998); Witness (1985); Dead Poets Society (1989); Green Card (1990);

21. Clint Eastwood

Actor | Million Dollar Baby

Clinton Eastwood Jr. was born May 31, 1930 in San Francisco, to Clinton Eastwood Sr., a bond salesman and later manufacturing executive for Georgia-Pacific Corporation, and Ruth Wood (née Margaret Ruth Runner), a housewife turned IBM clerk. He grew up in nearby Piedmont. At school Clint took ...

Gran Torino (2008); Unforgiven (1992); Million Dollar Baby (2004); Mystic River (2003); Sully (2016); The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976); The Bridges of Madison County (1995); Letters From Iwo Jima (2006)

22. George Roy Hill

Director | The Sting

George Roy Hill was never able to 'hit it off' with the critics despite the fact that 2 of his films - Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), and The Sting (1973) - had remained among the top 10 box office hits by 1976. His work was frequently derided as 'impersonal' or lacking in stylistic ...

The Sting (1973); Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969); The World according to Garp (1982); Funny Farm (1988)

23. Ridley Scott

Producer | The Martian

Described by film producer Michael Deeley as "the very best eye in the business", director Ridley Scott was born on November 30, 1937 in South Shields, Tyne and Wear. His father was an officer in the Royal Engineers and the family followed him as his career posted him throughout the United Kingdom ...

'Alien' (1979); 'Blade Runner' (1982); 'Gladiator' (2000); 'Thelma & Louise' (1991); 'The Martian' (2015); 'The Martian' (2015)

24. Ron Howard

Producer | Arrested Development

Academy Award-winning filmmaker Ron Howard is one of this generation's most popular directors. From the critically acclaimed dramas A Beautiful Mind (2001) and Apollo 13 (1995) to the hit comedies Parenthood (1989) and Splash (1983), he has created some of Hollywood's most memorable films.

Howard ...

A Beautiful Mind (2001); Cinderella Man (2005); Splash (1984); Night Shift (1982); Parenthood (1989); Cocoon (1985);

25. John Schlesinger

Director | Midnight Cowboy

Oscar-winning director John Schlesinger, who was born in London, on February 16, 1926, was the eldest child in a solidly middle-class Jewish family. Berbard Schlesinger, his father, was a pediatrician, and his mother, Winifred, was a musician. He served in the Army in the Far East during World War ...

Midnight Cowboy (1969); Marathon Man (1976); Far from the Madding Crowd (1967); Pacific Heights (1990)

26. Asghar Farhadi

Writer | Forooshande

Asghar Farhadi was born in 1972 in Iran. He became interested in cinema in his teenage years and started his filmmaking education by joining the Youth Cinema Society of Esfahan in 1986 where he made 8mm and 16mm short films. He received his Bachelors in Theater from University of Tehran's School of...

A Separation (2011); Dancing in the Dust (2003); Beautiful City (2004); Fireworks Wednesday (2006); About Elly (2009);

27. Luc Besson

Writer | Le Cinquième Élément

Luc Besson spent the first years of his life following his parents, scuba diving instructors, around the world. His early life was entirely aquatic. He already showed amazing creativity as a youth, writing early drafts of The Big Blue (1988) and The Fifth Element (1997), as an adolescent bored in ...

Léon: The Professional (1994); Lucy (I) (2014); The Last Battle (1983); Atlantis: The Lost Empire; The Fifth Element (1997); Nikita (1990); The Family (I) (2013); The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999)

28. Bong Joon Ho

Writer | Snowpiercer

Bong Joon-ho is a South Korean filmmaker. The recipient of three Academy Awards, his filmography is characterized by emphasis on social themes, genre-mixing, black humor, and sudden tone shifts. He first became known to audiences and achieved a cult following with his directorial debut film, the ...

Parasite (2019); Memories of Murder (2003); Snowpiercer (2013); Mother (2009); Okja (2017);

29. David Fincher

Director | Se7en

David Fincher was born in 1962 in Denver, Colorado, and was raised in Marin County, California. When he was 18 years old he went to work for John Korty at Korty Films in Mill Valley. He subsequently worked at ILM (Industrial Light and Magic) from 1981-1983. Fincher left ILM to direct TV commercials...

'Fight Club' (1999); 'Se7en' (1995); 'Gone Girl' (2014); 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button' (2008); 'The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo' (2011); 'The Game' (1997); 'Panic Room' (2002)

30. Ivan Reitman

Producer | Up in the Air

Canadian producer and director Ivan Reitman created many of American cinema's most successful and best loved feature film comedies and worked with Hollywood's acting elite. Reitman produced such hits as the ground-breaking sensation National Lampoon's National Lampoon's Animal House (1978), which ...

Ghostbusters (1984); Twins (1988); Ghostbusters II (1989); Dave (1993); Kindergarten Cop (1990); Junior (1994); Evolution (2001)

31. John Carpenter

Writer | The Fog

John Howard Carpenter was born in Carthage, New York, to mother Milton Jean (Carter) and father Howard Ralph Carpenter. His family moved to Bowling Green, Kentucky, where his father, a professor, was head of the music department at Western Kentucky University. He attended Western Kentucky ...

1. Halloween (1978); Big Trouble in Little China (1986); Christine (1983); Assault on Precinct 13 (1976); Escape from New York (1981); The Thing (1982)

32. Tim Burton

Producer | Edward Scissorhands

Timothy Walter Burton was born in Burbank, California, to Jean Rae (Erickson), who owned a cat-themed gift shop, and William Reed Burton, who worked for the Burbank Park and Recreation Department. He spent most of his childhood as a recluse, drawing cartoons, and watching old movies (he was ...

Edward Scissorhands (1990); Ed Wood (1994); Ed Wood (1994); Batman (1989); Big Fish (2003); Big Fish (2003); Planet of the Apes (2001); Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2016; Dumbo (2019); Dumbo (2019);

33. Sydney Pollack

Director | Tootsie

Sydney Pollack was an Academy Award-winning director, producer, actor, writer and public figure, who directed and produced over 40 films.

Sydney Irwin Pollack was born July 1, 1934 in Lafayette, Indiana, USA, to Rebecca (Miller), a homemaker, and David Pollack, a professional boxer turned pharmacist...

Tootsie (1982); Out of Africa (1985); The Way We Were (1973); Bobby Deerfield (1977); Sabrina (1995); The Interpreter (2005)

34. Carl Reiner

Writer | The Dick Van Dyke Show

Carl Reiner is a legend of American comedy, who achieved great success as a comic actor, a director, producer and recording artist. He won nine Emmy Awards, three as an actor, four as a writer and two as a producer. He also won a Grammy Award for his album "The 2,000 Year Old Man", based on his ...

All of Me (1984); Toy Story 4 (2019); Oh, God! (1977); Summer School (1987); Ocean's Eleven (2001); The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961-1966);

35. Rob Reiner

Actor | All in the Family

Robert Reiner was born in New York City, to Estelle Reiner (née Lebost) and Emmy-winning actor, comedian, writer, and producer Carl Reiner.

As a child, his father was his role model, as Carl Reiner created and starred in The Dick Van Dyke Show. Estelle was also an inspiration for him to become a ...

Misery (1990); Stand by Me (1986); The Princess Bride (1987)

36. Woody Allen

Writer | Annie Hall

Woody Allen was born on November 30, 1935, as Allen Konigsberg, in The Bronx, NY, the son of Martin Konigsberg and Nettie Konigsberg. He has one younger sister, Letty Aronson. As a young boy, he became intrigued with magic tricks and playing the clarinet, two hobbies that he continues today.

Allen ...

Annie Hall (1977); Hannah and Her Sisters (1986); Midnight in Paris (2011); Manhattan (1979); Mighty Aphrodite (1995)

37. Bernardo Bertolucci

Writer | Il conformista

Bernardo Bertolucci, the Italian director whose films were known for their colorful visual style, was born in Parma, Italy. He attended Rome University and became famous as a poet. He served as assistant director for Pier Paolo Pasolini in the film Accattone (1961) and directed The Grim Reaper (...

1900 (Novecento), 1976; Last Tango in Paris, 1972; The Last Emperor (1987);

38. Terry Gilliam

Writer | Brazil

Terry Gilliam was born near Medicine Lake, Minnesota. When he was 12 his family moved to Los Angeles where he became a fan of MAD magazine. In his early twenties he was often stopped by the police who suspected him of being a drug addict and Gilliam had to explain that he worked in advertising. In ...

Monty Python’s The Meaning Of Life (1983); 12 Monkeys (1995); Time Bandits (1981)

39. Sidney Lumet

Director | 12 Angry Men

Sidney Lumet was a master of cinema, best known for his technical knowledge and his skill at getting first-rate performances from his actors -- and for shooting most of his films in his beloved New York. He made over 40 movies, often complex and emotional, but seldom overly sentimental. Although ...

12 ANGRY MEN (1957), DOG DAY AFTERNOON (1975), THE VERDICT (1982), SERPICO (1973)

40. Robert Benton

Writer | Kramer vs. Kramer

Robert Douglas Benton is an American screenwriter and filmmaker from Waxahachie, Texas who is known for screenwriting Bonnie & Clyde, Kramer vs. Kramer and Superman. He won two Academy Awards for writing and directing Kramer vs. Kramer. He directed other feature films including Twilight, Bad ...

Superman; Kramer vs Kramer, Bonnie and Clide; Places in the Heart;

41. Quentin Tarantino

Writer | Reservoir Dogs

Quentin Jerome Tarantino was born in Knoxville, Tennessee. His father, Tony Tarantino, is an Italian-American actor and musician from New York, and his mother, Connie (McHugh), is a nurse from Tennessee. Quentin moved with his mother to Torrance, California, when he was four years old.

In January of...

Pulp Fiction; Kill Bill