My Favorite Directors
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1.
Stanley Kubrick
Director, A Clockwork Orange
Stanley Kubrick was born in New York, and was considered intelligent despite poor grades at school. Hoping that a change of scenery would produce better academic performance, Kubrick's father Jack (a physician) sent him in 1940 to Pasadena, California, to stay with his uncle Martin Perveler. Returning to the Bronx in 1941 for his last year of grammar school...
2.
Christopher Nolan
Writer, The Dark Knight
Best known for his cerebral, often nonlinear story-telling, acclaimed writer-director Christopher Nolan was born on July 30, 1970 in London, England. Over the course of 15 years of film-making, Nolan has gone from low-budget independent films to working on some of the biggest blockbusters ever made...
3.
David Fincher
Director, Fight Club
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 and music videos after signing with N...
4.
Terrence Malick
Writer, The Thin Red Line
Terrence Malick was born in Ottawa, Illinois. His family subsequently lived in Oklahoma and he went to school in Austin, Texas. He did his undergraduate work at Harvard, graduating summa cum laude with a degree in philosophy in 1965. A member of the Phi Beta Kappa honor society, he attended Magdalen College...
5.
Ridley Scott
Producer, Blade Runner
Ridley Scott was born in South Shields, Tyne and Wear (then Northumberland) on 30 November 1937. His father was an officer in the Royal Engineers and the family followed him as his career posted him throughout the UK and Europe before they eventually returned to Teesside. Scott wanted to join Army...
6.
Quentin Tarantino
Writer, Pulp Fiction
Quentin Jerome Tarantino was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, to Connie (McHugh), a nurse, and Tony Tarantino, an Italian-American actor and musician from New York. Quentin moved with his mother to Torrance, California, when he was four years old. In January of 1992, first-time writer-director Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs appeared at the Sundance Film Festival...
7.
Steven Spielberg
Producer, Saving Private Ryan
Undoubtedly one of the most influential film personalities in the history of film, Steven Spielberg is perhaps Hollywood's best known director and one of the wealthiest filmmakers in the world. Spielberg has countless big-grossing, critically acclaimed credits to his name, as producer, director and writer...
8.
Nicolas Winding Refn
Writer, Bronson
Writer, director, and producer Nicolas Winding Refn was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1970, to Anders Refn, a film director and editor, and Vibeke Winding (née Tuxen), a cinematographer. At the age of eight, he moved to New York with his parents where he lived out his teenage years. New York quickly became his city and soon began to shape Nicolas's future...
9.
Paul Thomas Anderson
Director, There Will Be Blood
Anderson was born in 1970. He was one of the first of the "video store" generation of film-makers. His father was the first man on his block to own a V.C.R., and from a very early age Anderson had an infinite number of titles available to him. While film-makers like Spielberg cut their teeth making 8 mm films, Anderson cut his teeth shooting films on video and editing them from V.C.R. to V.C.R...
10.
Martin Scorsese
Producer, The Wolf of Wall Street
After serious deliberations about entering the priesthood - he entered a seminary in 1956 - Martin Scorsese opted to channel his passions into film. He graduated from NYU as a film major in 1964. Catching the eye of producer Roger Corman with his 1960s student films (including co-editing Woodstock)...
11.
Zack Snyder
Director, 300
Zachary Edward "Zack" Snyder (born March 1, 1966) is an American film director, film producer, and screenwriter, best known for action and science fiction films. Snyder made his feature film debut with the 2004 remake Dawn of the Dead and has gone on to be known for his comic book movies and superhero films...
13.
Darren Aronofsky
Director, Requiem for a Dream
Darren Aronofsky was born February 12, 1969, in Brooklyn, New York. Growing up, Darren was always artistic: he loved classic movies and, as a teenager, he even spent time doing graffiti art. After high school, Darren went to Harvard University to study film (both live-action and animation). He won several film awards after completing his senior thesis film...
14.
Sam Mendes
Director, American Beauty
Samuel Alexander Mendes was born on August 1, 1965 in Reading, England, UK to parents James Peter Mendes, a retired university lecturer, and Valerie Helene Mendes, an author who writes children's books. Their marriage didn't last long, James divorced Sam's mother in 1970 when Sam was just 5-years-old...
15.
Clint Eastwood
Actor, Million Dollar Baby
Perhaps the icon of macho movie stars, Clint Eastwood has become a standard in international cinema. He was born in 1930 in San Francisco, to Margaret Ruth (Runner), a factory worker, and Clinton Eastwood, Sr., a steelworker. Eastwood briefly attended Los Angeles City College but dropped out to pursue acting...
18.
Ben Affleck
Actor, Argo
Benjamin Géza Affleck-Boldt was born on August 15, 1972 in Berkeley, California, USA, and was raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. His mother, Chris Anne (née Boldt), is a school teacher, and his father, Timothy Byers Affleck, is a social worker; the two are now divorced. Ben has a younger brother...
19.
Andy Wachowski
Writer, The Matrix
Director, writer and producer Andy Wachowski was born in 1967 in Chicago and is the son of Lynne, a nurse and painter and Ron, a businessman. Andy was educated at Kellogg Elementary School in Chicago, before moving on to Whitney Young High School. After graduating from high school, he attended Emerson College in Boston, but dropped out...
20.
Lana Wachowski
Writer, The Matrix
Lana Wachowski - previously Laurence (Larry) Wachowski - is a sibling of Andy Wachowski, of the creative 'Watchowskis' duo behind ground-breaking movies like The Matrix and Cloud Atlas. Born to mother Lynne, a nurse, and father Ron, a businessman of Polish descent, she grew up in Chicago, in a tight...
23.
Wes Anderson
Director, The Grand Budapest Hotel
Wesley Wales Anderson was born in Houston, Texas. His mother, Texas Ann (Burroughs), is an archaeologist turned real estate agent, and his father, Melver Leonard Anderson, worked in advertising and PR. He has two brothers, Eric and Mel. Anderson's parents divorced when he was a young child, an event that he described as the most crucial event of his brothers and his growing up...
24.
Cameron Crowe
Director, Almost Famous
Certainly idiosyncratic as a writer, Cameron Crowe has created a series of scripts that, while liked by the critics, were considered offbeat and difficult to market. Cameron Bruce Crowe was born in Palm Springs, California, to Alice Marie Crowe (née George), a teacher and activist, and James A. Crowe...
26.
Rob Reiner
Actor, This Is Spinal Tap
Robert Reiner was born to Emmy-Winning actor, comedian, writer, and producer Carl Reiner, and mother, Estelle Reiner. Robert as a child often looked up to his father as his inspiration and role-model. Carl Reiner was on The Dick Van Dyke Show which Carl Reiner created and also starred in. Estelle Reiner was the inspiration for Rob Reiner to become a director...
27.
Peter Jackson
Peter Jackson was born as an only child in a small coast-side town in New Zealand in 1961. When a friend of his parents bought him a super 8 movie camera (because she saw how much he enjoyed taking photos), the then eight-year-old Peter instantly grabbed the thing to start recording his own movies, which he made with his friends...
28.
Roman Polanski
Director, The Pianist
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 before World War II began...
29.
Ron Howard
Actor, American Graffiti
Ron was born in Oklahoma, into an acting family - his father, Rance Howard, had realized a boyhood dream of acting by attending the University of Oklahoma and majoring in drama, and his mother, Jean Speegle Howard, went through acting school in New York. The family surname had been changed from "Beckenholdt" to "Howard" several years before Ron was born...
30.
George Lucas
George Walton Lucas, Jr. was raised on a walnut ranch in Modesto, California. His father was a stationery store owner and he had three siblings. During his late teen years, he went to Downey High School and was very much interested in drag racing. He planned to become a professional race-car driver...
31.
Andrew Stanton
Writer, Finding Nemo
Oscar-winning filmmaker Andrew Stanton was raised in Rockport, Massachusetts. He was educated at The California Institute of the Arts (or "CalArts") in Los Angeles, where he studied character animation. After graduation, Stanton began working as a writer on the TV series Mighty Mouse, the New Adventures. In 1990, he became only the second animator and ninth employee to join Pixar Animation Studios...
32.
Kathryn Bigelow
Director, The Hurt Locker
A very talented painter, Kathryn spent two years at the San Francisco Art Institute. At 20, she won a scholarship to the Whitney Museum's Independent Study Program. She was given a studio in a former Offtrack Betting building, literally in an old bank vault, where she made art and waited to be critiqued by people like Richard Serra...
33.
Oliver Stone
Director, Platoon
Oliver Stone has become known as a master of controversial subjects and a legendary film maker. His films are filled with a variety of film angles and styles, he pushes his actors to give Oscar-worthy performances, and despite his failures, has always returned to success. William Oliver Stone was born in New York City...
34.
Alejandro González Iñárritu
Alejandro González Iñárritu (Spanish pronunciation, ih-nyar-ee-too; born August 15, 1963) is a Mexican film director. González Iñárritu is the first Mexican director to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director and by the Directors Guild of America for Best Director. He is also the first...
36.
Paul Greengrass
Director, The Bourne Ultimatum
Paul Greengrass started his filmmaking career with a super 8 camera he found in his art room in secondary school. Those short movies were animation horror films he made using old dolls, artist dummies, and the general art room clutter. After studying in Cambridge University he got into Granada Television...
37.
Robert Zemeckis
Writer, Back to the Future
A whiz-kid with special effects, Robert is from the Spielberg camp of film-making (Steven Spielberg produced many of his films). Usually working with writing partner Bob Gale, Robert's earlier films show he has a talent for zany comedy (Romancing the Stone, 1941) and special effect vehicles (Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Back to the Future)...
38.
Edward Zwick
Producer, The Last Samurai
Edward Zwick is well-known for his heroic movies that include Glory, and the breathtaking works of art that include Legends of the Fall. Zwick has also been known for his thoughtfulness as a director, and for his record of working with television series and other films as a producer. Born in 1952...
39.
Frank Darabont
Writer, The Shawshank Redemption
Three-time Oscar nominee Frank Darabont was born in a refugee camp in 1959 in Montbeliard, France, the son of Hungarian parents who had fled Budapest during the failed 1956 Hungarian revolution. Brought to America as an infant, he settled with his family in Los Angeles and attended Hollywood High School...
41.
Tim Burton
Producer, Edward Scissorhands
Tim Burton was raised in Burbank, California. He spent most of his childhood as a recluse, drawing cartoons and watching old movies (he was especially fond of films with Vincent Price). When he was in the ninth grade, his artistic talent was recognized by a local garbage company when he won a prize for an anti-litter poster he designed...