Directors
by trevordownes | created - 23 Dec 2018 | updated - 30 Oct 2019 | Public
1. J.J. Abrams
Producer | Lost
Jeffrey Jacob Abrams was born in New York City and raised in Los Angeles, the son of TV producer parents. Abrams planned on going to dental school, but decided to study film at Sarah Lawrence College. At 15, he wrote the music for Don Dohler's Nightbeast (1982). In his senior year, he and Jill ...
2. 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, ...
3. James Cameron
Writer | Avatar
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 ...
4. Sean Penn
Actor | Mystic River
Sean Penn is a powerhouse film performer capable of intensely moving work, who has gone from strength to strength during a colourful film career, and who has drawn much media attention for his stormy private life and political viewpoints.
Sean Justin Penn was born in Los Angeles, California, the ...
5. Joel Coen
Producer | The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
Joel Coen was born on November 29, 1954 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA as Joel Daniel Coen. He is a producer and writer, known for The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018), Fargo (1996) and A Serious Man (2009). He has been married to Frances McDormand since April 1, 1984. They have one child.
6. Guillermo del Toro
Writer | El laberinto del fauno
Guillermo del Toro was born October 9, 1964 in Guadalajara Jalisco, Mexico. Raised by his Catholic grandmother, del Toro developed an interest in filmmaking in his early teens. Later, he learned about makeup and effects from the legendary Dick Smith (The Exorcist (1973)) and worked on making his ...
7. Nicolas Cage
Actor | Face/Off
Nicolas Cage was born Nicolas Kim Coppola in Long Beach, California, the son of comparative literature professor August Coppola (whose brother is director Francis Ford Coppola) and dancer/choreographer Joy Vogelsang. He is of Italian (father) and Polish and German (mother) descent. Cage changed his...
8. Ben Affleck
Producer | Argo
American actor and filmmaker Benjamin Géza Affleck-Boldt was born on August 15, 1972 in Berkeley, California, and was raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His mother, Chris Anne (née Boldt), is a school teacher, and his father, Timothy Byers Affleck, is a social worker; the two are divorced. Ben has...
9. Robert Redford
Actor | The Natural
Charles Robert Redford, Jr. was born on August 18, 1936, in Santa Monica, California, to Martha (Hart), from Texas, and Charles Robert Redford, an accountant for Standard Oil, who was originally from Connecticut. He is of English, Scottish, Cornish, and Irish ancestry. Robert's mother died in 1955,...
10. Demián Bichir
Actor | The Hateful Eight
Demián Bichir Nájera was born in Mexico City, Mexico, to Maricruz Nájera (María de la Cruz Najera Botello), an actress, and Alejandro Bichir (Alejandro Bichir Batres), a theatre director. His parents met in the theatre. He has two brothers who are also actors, Bruno Bichir and Odiseo Bichir. His ...
11. Matthew Modine
Actor | Full Metal Jacket
The youngest of seven, Matthew was born in Loma Linda, Ca, to Dolores (Warner), a bookkeeper, and Mark Alexander Modine, a drive-in theater manager. After graduating high school in Imperial Beach, Ca. Modine moved to NYC (1979). Matthew studied with Stella Adler at her Conservatory of Acting. While...
12. James Remar
Self | Sex and the City: A Farewell
James is a rugged, intense character player with leading man good looks. Having first gained recognition in 1979 as Ajax, in his second film, The Warriors (1979). That same year he garnered acclaim on Broadway with Richard Gere in the concentration camp drama "Bent".
In a career spanning nearly four...
13. Clint Eastwood
Actor | Million Dollar Baby
Clint Eastwood was born May 31, 1930 in San Francisco, the son of Clinton Eastwood Sr., a bond salesman and later manufacturing executive for Georgia-Pacific Corporation, and Ruth Wood, a housewife turned IBM operator. He had a comfortable, middle-class upbringing in nearby Piedmont. At school ...
14. Laurence Fishburne
Actor | The Matrix
Critically hailed for his forceful, militant, authoritative figures and one of Hollywood's most talented and versatile performers, Laurence (John) Fishburne III has been the recipient of numerous awards, including a number of NAACP Image honors.
Born in Augusta, Georgia on July 30, 1961, to Hattie ...
15. Tommy Lee Jones
Actor | The Fugitive
Tommy Lee Jones was born in San Saba, Texas, the son of Lucille Marie (Scott), a police officer and beauty shop owner, and Clyde C. Jones, who worked on oil fields. Tommy himself worked in underwater construction and on an oil rig. He attended St. Mark's School of Texas, a prestigious prep school ...
16. Garret Dillahunt
Actor | 12 Years a Slave
Garret studied journalism at the University of Washington and received an MFA from New York University's Graduate Acting Program. He performed on and off Broadway and in theaters around the country before he also began pursuing film and television roles. A self described workaholic, he enjoys a ...
17. Mel Gibson
Actor | Braveheart
Mel Columcille Gerard Gibson was born January 3, 1956 in Peekskill, New York, USA, as the sixth of eleven children of Hutton Gibson, a railroad brakeman, and Anne Patricia (Reilly) Gibson (who died in December of 1990). His mother was Irish, from County Longford, while his American-born father is ...
18. Ron Howard
Actor | 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 (1984), he has created some of Hollywood's most memorable films.
Howard ...
19. Tony Danza
Actor | Don Jon
Tony Danza is an American actor, perhaps best known for starring on some of television's most beloved and long-running series, including Taxi (1978-1983) and Who's the Boss? (1984-1992).
Danza was born in Brooklyn, New York to Anne (Cammisa), a bookkeeper, and Matty Iadanza, a garbageman. His mother...
20. Ben Stiller
Producer | Tropic Thunder
Benjamin Edward Meara Stiller was born on November 30, 1965, in New York City, New York, to legendary comedians Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara. His father was of Austrian Jewish and Polish Jewish descent, and his mother was of Irish Catholic descent (she converted to Judaism).
His parents made no real...
21. Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Director | Un long dimanche de fiançailles
Jean-Pierre Jeunet is a self-taught director who was very quickly interested by cinema, with a predilection for a fantastic cinema where form is as important as the subject. Thus he started directing TV commercials and video clips (such as Julien Clerc in 1984). At the same time he met designer/...
22. Jodie Foster
Actress | The Silence of the Lambs
Jodie Foster started her career at the age of two. For four years she made commercials and finally gave her debut as an actress in the TV series Mayberry R.F.D. (1968). In 1975 Jodie was offered the role of prostitute Iris Steensma in the movie Taxi Driver (1976). This role, for which she received ...
23. 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...
24. Dylan Baker
Actor | Happiness
Dylan Baker was born on October 7, 1959 in Syracuse, New York, USA. He is an actor and director, known for Happiness (1998), Revolutionary Road (2008) and Trick 'r Treat (2007). He has been married to Becky Ann Baker since 1987. They have one child.
25. Armin Mueller-Stahl
Actor | Eastern Promises
Armin Mueller-Stahl is a German actor with a relatively long film career. He was once nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, for his role as an abusive father in the biographical drama "Shine" (1996).
In 1930, Mueller-Stahl was born in Tilsit, East Prussia. The town developed ...
26. Steve Buscemi
Actor | Fargo
Steve Buscemi was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Dorothy (Wilson), a restaurant hostess, and John Buscemi, a sanitation worker. He is of Italian (father) and English, Dutch, and Irish (mother) descent. He became interested in acting during his last year of high school. After graduating, he moved to...
27. John Carroll Lynch
Actor | The Founder
John Carroll Lynch was born August 1, 1963 in Boulder, Colorado, and was raised in Denver. It was there John found a passion for acting and became a Denver Broncos fan. He graduated in the mid-80s with a B.F.A. in theatre from the The Catholic University of America / Hartke Theatre Acting program. ...
28. Djimon Hounsou
Actor | Blood Diamond
Djimon Hounsou was born in Cotonou, Benin, in west Africa, to Albertine and Pierre Hounsou, a cook. He moved to Lyon, France, when he was thirteen. Hounsou has graced the catwalks of Paris and London as a popular male model. He has since left his modeling career and has worked on Gladiator (2000) ...
29. Shia LaBeouf
Actor | Honey Boy
Shia Saide LaBeouf was born in Los Angeles, California, to Shayna (Saide) and Jeffrey Craig LaBeouf, and is an only child. His mother is from an Ashkenazi Jewish family, while his father has Cajun (French) ancestry. His parents are divorced. He started his career by doing stand-up comedy around ...
30. Pruitt Taylor Vince
Actor | Identity
Vince first started to get noticed for his excellent performances at the start of his career in Shy People (1987) and Mississippi Burning (1988). In both these films he played something of a blathering redneck idiot, although there was a streak of pathos in both performances which made it ...
31. Martin Scorsese
Director | Taxi Driver
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 ...
32. Jesse Williams
Actor | The Cabin in the Woods
Jesse Wesley Williams born August 5, 1981 is a former high school teacher and activist turned actor/director. He's best known for his role as Dr. Jackson Avery on the ABC Television series Grey's Anatomy and his advocacy for the disenfranchised, highlighted by his internationally resonant ...
33. Tom Goodman-Hill
Actor | Rebecca
Tom Goodman-Hill was born in 1968 in Enfield, Middlesex, England as Tom Hill. He is an actor, known for Rebecca (2020), The Imitation Game (2014) and Everest (2015). He has been married to Jessica Raine since September 1, 2015. They have one child. He was previously married to Kerry Bradley.
34. Steven Soderbergh
Director | Sex, Lies, and Videotape
Steven Andrew Soderbergh was born on January 14, 1963 in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, the second of six children of Mary Ann (Bernard) and Peter Soderbergh. His father was of Swedish and Irish descent, and his mother was of Italian ancestry. While he was still at a very young age, his family moved to ...
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