Greatest Film Directors

1. 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 ...

2001:a space odyssey(1968) Dr.Strangelove(1964) Paths Of Glory(1957) Barry Lyndon(1975) Lolita(1962) Full Metal Jacket(1987) The Shining(1980) A Clockwork Orange(1971) The Killing(1956) Spartacus(1960)

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 ...

North by Northwest(1959) Vertigo(1958) Psycho(1960) Notorious(1946) The Lady Vanishes(1938) Rear Window(1954) Marnie(1964) Frenzy(1972) To Catch a Thief(1955) The 39 Steps(1935) Strangers on a Train(1951) Dial M for Murder(1954) Rope(1948) The Birds(1963) Torn Curtain(1966) Saboteur(1942) Foreign Correspondent(1940) Lifeboat(1944) Topaz(1969) Suspicion(1941) Spellbound (1945) Rebecca (1940) Shadow of a Doubt (1943) The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)

3. 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 ...

Raging Bull(1980) Goodfellas(1990) Taxi Driver(1976) Mean Streets(1974) The King Of Comedy(1983) The wolf of wall street(2013) Casino(1995) The Irishman(2019)

4. Sergei Eisenstein

Director | Ivan Groznyy

The son of an affluent architect, Eisenstein attended the Institute of Civil Engineering in Petrograd as a young man. With the fall of the tsar in 1917, he worked as an engineer for the Red Army. In the following years, Eisenstein joined up with the Moscow Proletkult Theater as a set designer and ...

Battleship Potemkin (1925) Strike (1925) October: Ten Days That Shook the World(1928) Ivan the Terrible, Part 1 (1944) Ivan the Terrible, Part 2 (1958) Que viva México! (1932) The General Line(1929) Alexander Nevsky(1938)

5. Michelangelo Antonioni

Writer | Blow-Up

Together with Fellini, Bergman and Kurosawa, Michelangelo Antonioni is credited with defining the modern art film. And yet Antonioni's cinema is also recognized today for defying any easy categorization, with his films ultimately seeming to belong to their own distinctive genre. Indeed, the ...

L'avventura (1960) L'eclisse (1962) Blowup (1966) Red Desert (1964) Zabriskie Point (1970) La notte (1961) Identification of a Woman (1982)

6. David Lean

Director | Lawrence of Arabia

An important British filmmaker, David Lean was born in Croydon on March 25, 1908 and brought up in a strict Quaker family (ironically, as a child he wasn't allowed to go to the movies). During the 1920s, he briefly considered the possibility of becoming an accountant like his father before finding ...

Lawrence of Arabia (1962) Great Expectations (1946) The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) Oliver Twist (1948) Doctor Zhivago (1965) Ryan's Daughter (1970) Brief Encounter (1945) A Passage to India (1984) In Which We Serve (1942)

7. Luis Buñuel

Writer | Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie

The father of cinematic Surrealism and one of the most original directors in the history of the film medium, Luis Buñuel was given a strict Jesuit education (which sowed the seeds of his obsession with both religion and subversive behavior), and subsequently moved to Madrid to study at the ...

Viridiana (1961) Un chien andalou (1929) Los olvidados (1950) L'âge d'or (1930) The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972) Tristana (1970) The Exterminating Angel (1962) That Obscure Object of Desire (1977) Ensayo de un crimen (1955) La mort en ce jardin (1956) Simón del desierto (1965) Le fantôme de la liberté (1974) The Milky Way(1969) Él(1953) Belle de jour (1967)

8. 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 ...

The Apartment (1960) One, Two, Three (1961) Some Like It Hot (1959) Sunset Blvd. (1950) Double Indemnity (1944) Witness for the Prosecution (1957) Irma la Douce (1963) Stalag 17 (1953) Ace in the Hole (1951) Sabrina (1954) The Seven Year Itch (1955) The Fortune Cookie (1966)

9. Howard Hawks

Director | Rio Bravo

What do the classic films Scarface (1932), Twentieth Century (1934), Bringing Up Baby (1938), Only Angels Have Wings (1939), His Girl Friday (1940), Sergeant York (1941), To Have and Have Not (1944), The Big Sleep (1946), Red River (1948) Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) and Rio Bravo (1959) have in...

Rio Bravo (1959) The Big Sleep (1946) Hatari!(1962) El Dorado(1966) Red River (1948) Scarface (1932) Only Angels Have Wings (1939) Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) To Have and Have Not (1944) Land of the Pharaohs(1955)

10. John Ford

Director | The Quiet Man

John Ford came to Hollywood following one of his brothers, an actor. Asked what brought him to Hollywood, he replied "the train". He became one of the most respected directors in the business, in spite of being known for his westerns, which were not considered "serious" film. He won six Oscars, ...

The Searchers (1956) The Grapes of Wrath (1940) My Darling Clementine (1946) The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) Stagecoach (1939) How Green Was My Valley (1941) Fort Apache (1948) She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) Wagon Master(1950) Mister Roberts (1955) Donovan's Reef (1963) Cheyenne Autumn (1964) Sergeant Rutledge (1960)

11. Orson Welles

Actor | Citizen Kane

His father, Richard Head Welles, was a well-to-do inventor, his mother, Beatrice (Ives) Welles, a beautiful concert pianist; Orson Welles was gifted in many arts (magic, piano, painting) as a child. When his mother died in 1924 (when he was nine) he traveled the world with his father. He was ...

Citizen Kane (1941) The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) The Lady from Shanghai (1947) Touch of Evil (1958) F for Fake (1973) Othello (1952) Mr. Arkadin (1955)

12. Ingmar Bergman

Writer | Smultronstället

Ernst Ingmar Bergman was born July 14, 1918, the son of a priest. The film and T.V. series, The Best Intentions (1992) is biographical and shows the early marriage of his parents. The film Sunday's Children (1992) depicts a bicycle journey with his father. In the miniseries Private Confessions (...

Persona (1966) The Seventh Seal (1957) Wild Strawberries (1957) The Virgin Spring (1960) Smiles of a Summer Night (1955)

13. Jean Renoir

Writer | La règle du jeu

Son of the famous Impressionist painter Pierre Auguste, he had a happy childhood. Pierre Renoir was his brother, and Claude Renoir was his nephew. After the end of World War I, where he won the Croix de Guerre, he moved from scriptwriting to filmmaking. He married Catherine Hessling, for whom he ...

The Rules of the Game (1939) Grand Illusion (1937) The River (1951) The Golden Coach (1952) French Cancan (1954) Toni (1935)

14. 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 ...

8½ (1963) La strada (1954) La dolce vita (1960) Nights of Cabiria (1957) Fellini's Roma (1972) Amarcord (1973)

15. 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 ...

Manhattan (1979) Annie Hall (1977) Zelig (1983) Broadway Danny Rose(1984) Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) Take the Money and Run (1969) Love and Death (1975) Sleeper (1973) Stardust Memories (1980) Husbands and Wives (1992) Bananas (1971)

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) Apocalypse Now (1979) The Conversation (1974) Rumble Fish (1983) The Outsiders (1983) The Godfather Part III (1990) Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988)

17. 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, ...

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) Schindler's List (1993) Jaws (1975) Saving Private Ryan (1998) E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) Jurassic Park (1993) Catch Me If You Can(2002) Duel(1971) Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

18. Aleksandr Dovzhenko

Writer | Zemlya

Aleksandr Dovzhenko was born on September 10, 1894 in Vyunishche, Sosnitsa Ueyzd, Chernigov Governorate, Russian Empire [now Sosnitsa, Sosnitsa Raion, Chernihiv Oblast, Ukraine]. He was a writer and director, known for Earth (1930), Shors (1939) and Life in Bloom (1949). He was married to Yuliya ...

Earth (1930) Arsenal (1929) Aerograd (1935) Zvenigora (1928) Ivan (1932)

19. Elia Kazan

Director | On the Waterfront

Known for his creative stage direction, Elia Kazan was born Elias Kazantzoglou on September 7, 1909 in Constantinople, Ottoman Empire (now Istanbul, Turkey). Noted for drawing out the best dramatic performances from his actors, he directed 21 actors to Oscar nominations, resulting in nine wins. He ...

On The Waterfront (1954) East of Eden (1955) A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) A Face in the Crowd (1957) Panic in the Streets(1950) Baby Doll (1956) Viva Zapata! (1952) A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945) Boomerang! (1947)

20. Vittorio De Sica

Director | Ladri di biciclette

Vittorio De Sica grew up in Naples, and started out as an office clerk in order to raise money to support his poor family. He was increasingly drawn towards acting, and made his screen debut while still in his teens, joining a stage company in 1923. By the late 1920s he was a successful matinee ...

Bicycle Thieves (1948) Umberto D. (1952) Miracle in Milan (1951) Shoeshine (1946) The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1970) The Children Are Watching Us (1944) Two Women (1960) The Gold of Naples (1954) I girasoli(1970)

21. Satyajit Ray

Writer | Pather Panchali

Satyajit Ray was born in Calcutta on May 2, 1921. His father, Late Sukumar Ray was an eminent poet and writer in the history of Bengali literature. In 1940, after receiving his degree in science and economics from Calcutta University, he attended Tagore's Viswa-Bharati University. His first movie ...

Pather Panchali (1955) The World of Apu (1959) The Music Room (1958) Aparajito (1956) Charulata (1964)

22. 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 ...

Blade Runner (1982) Alien (1979) Thelma & Louise (1991) Black Hawk Down (2001) Gladiator (2000) The Martian (2015) The Duellists (1977) All the Money in the World (2017) House of Gucci(2021)

23. Fritz Lang

Actor | Le mépris

Fritz Lang was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1890. His father managed a construction company. His mother, Pauline Schlesinger, was Jewish but converted to Catholicism when Lang was ten. After high school, he enrolled briefly at the Technische Hochschule Wien and then started to train as a painter. ...

Metropolis (1927) M (1931) Moonfleet(1955) The Big Heat (1953) Western Union(1940) Scarlet Street (1945) Fury (1936) The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933)

24. D.W. Griffith

Director | The Birth of a Nation

David Wark Griffith was born in rural Kentucky to Jacob "Roaring Jake" Griffith, a former Confederate Army colonel and Civil War veteran. Young Griffith grew up with his father's romantic war stories and melodramatic nineteenth-century literature that were to eventually shape his movies. In 1897 ...

Intolerance (1916) Way Down East (1920) The Birth of a Nation (1915) Orphans of the Storm (1921) The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912) Broken Blossoms (1919) The Fugitive (1910) The Lonedale Operator (1911)

25. David Lynch

Writer | Twin Peaks

Born in precisely the kind of small-town American setting so familiar from his films, David Lynch spent his childhood being shunted from one state to another as his research scientist father kept getting relocated. He attended various art schools, married Peggy Lynch and then fathered future ...

Mulholland Dr. (2001) Blue Velvet (1986) Wild at Heart (1990) The Elephant Man (1980) The Straight Story (1999) Eraserhead (1977)

26. Sam Peckinpah

Writer | The Wild Bunch

"If they move", commands stern-eyed William Holden, "kill 'em". So begins The Wild Bunch (1969), Sam Peckinpah's bloody, high-body-count eulogy to the mythologized Old West. "Pouring new wine into the bottle of the Western, Peckinpah explodes the bottle", observed critic Pauline Kael. That ...

The Wild Bunch (1969) Ride the High Country (1962) Cross of Iron (1977) Straw Dogs (1971) Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973) The Getaway (1972)

27. 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 (1994) Reservoir Dogs (1992) Once upon a Time in... Hollywood (2019) Inglourious Basterds (2009) Death Proof (2007) Django Unchained (2012) Jackie Brown (1997) The Hateful Eight (2015)

28. Jean-Luc Godard

Director | Bande à part

Jean-Luc Godard was born in Paris on December 3, 1930, the second of four children in a bourgeois Franco-Swiss family. His father was a doctor who owned a private clinic, and his mother came from a preeminent family of Swiss bankers. During World War II Godard became a naturalized citizen of ...

Contempt (1963) Breathless (1960) Week-End (1967) Histoire(s) du cinéma (1988-1998) Pierrot le fou (1965) Vivre sa vie (1962)

29. William Wyler

Director | The Best Years of Our Lives

William Wyler was an American filmmaker who, at the time of his death in 1981, was considered by his peers as second only to John Ford as a master craftsman of cinema. The winner of three Best Director Academy Awards, second again only to Ford's four, Wyler's reputation has unfairly suffered as the...

The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) Roman Holiday (1953) Ben-Hur (1959) The Heiress (1949) The Little Foxes (1941) Detective Story(1951) Dead End (1937) The Letter (1940) The Big Country (1958) How to Steal a Million (1966) Funny Girl (1968) The Collector (1965)

30. 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 ...

Once upon a Time in America (1984) Once upon a Time in the West (1968) The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) For a Few Dollars More (1965) Giù la testa (1971) A Fistful of Dollars (1964)

31. Roberto Rossellini

Writer | Roma città aperta

The master filmmaker Roberto Rossellini, as one of the creators of neo-realism, is one of the most influential directors of all time. His neo-realist films influenced France's nouvelle vague movement in the 1950s and '60s that changed the face of international cinema. He also influenced American ...

Voyage in Italy (1954) Rome, Open City (1945) Paisan (1946) Stromboli (1950) The Flowers of St. Francis (1950) General della Rovere (1959) Germany, Year Zero (1948)

32. John Huston

Director | The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

An eccentric rebel of epic proportions, this Hollywood titan reigned supreme as director, screenwriter and character actor in a career that endured over five decades. The ten-time Oscar-nominated legend was born John Marcellus Huston in Nevada, Missouri, on August 5, 1906. His ancestry was English,...

The Maltese Falcon (1941) The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) The Asphalt Jungle (1950) The Misfits (1961) Key Largo (1948) The African Queen (1951) Prizzi's Honor (1985) Across the Pacific (1942) Beat the Devil (1953) The List of Adrian Messenger (1963) The Man Who Would Be King (1975)

33. 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 ...

Rosemary's Baby (1968) Chinatown (1974) Knife in the Water (1962) Repulsion (1965) The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967) The Ghost Writer (2010)

34. Joel Coen

Producer | The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

Joel Daniel Coen is an American filmmaker who regularly collaborates with his younger brother Ethan. They made Raising Arizona, Barton Fink, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, True Grit, O Brother Where Art Thou?, Burn After Reading, A Serious Man, Inside Llewyn Davis, Hail Caesar and other projects. Joel ...

No Country for Old Men (2007) Fargo (1996) The Big Lebowski (1998) Miller's Crossing (1990) Blood Simple (1984) Raising Arizona (1987) Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) Barton Fink (1991) The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)

35. Ethan Coen

Producer | The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

The younger brother of Joel, Ethan Coen is an Academy Award and Golden Globe winning writer, producer and director coming from small independent films to big profile Hollywood films. He was born on September 21, 1957 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In some films of the brothers- Ethan & Joel wrote, Joel...

No Country for Old Men (2007) Fargo (1996) The Big Lebowski (1998) Miller's Crossing (1990) Blood Simple (1984) Raising Arizona (1987) Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) Barton Fink (1991) The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)

36. F.W. Murnau

Director | Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans

F.W. Murnau was a German film director. He was greatly influenced by Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Shakespeare and Ibsen plays he had seen at the age of 12, and became a friend of director Max Reinhardt. During World War I he served as a company commander at the eastern front and was in the German air ...

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927) Nosferatu (1922) Faust (1926) The Last Laugh (1924) Tabu: A Story of the South Seas (1931)

37. Oliver Stone

Director | JFK

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 ...

JFK (1991) Platoon (1986) Wall Street (1987) The Doors (1991) Nixon (1995) Talk Radio (1988) Born on the Fourth of July (1989) Snowden (2016) W. (2008)

38. Mel Brooks

Actor | Spaceballs

Mel Brooks was born Melvin Kaminsky on June 28, 1926 in Brooklyn, New York. He served in WWII, and afterwards got a job playing the drums at nightclubs in the Catskills. Brooks eventually started a comedy act and also worked in radio and as Master Entertainer at Grossinger's Resort before going to ...

Young Frankenstein (1974) The Producers (1968) Blazing Saddles (1974) Silent Movie (1976) Spaceballs (1987 High Anxiety (1977) History of the World: Part I (1981)

39. Werner Herzog

Director | Fitzcarraldo

Director. Writer. Producer. Actor. Poet. He studied history, literature and theatre for some time, but didn't finish it and founded instead his own film production company in 1963. Later in his life, Herzog also staged several operas in Bayreuth, Germany, and at the Milan Scala in Italy. Herzog has...

Aguirre: The Wrath of God (1972) Fata Morgana (1971) Mein iebster Feind - Klaus Kinski (1999) The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974) Fitzcarraldo (1982) Lebenszeichen (1968)

40. Andrei Tarkovsky

Writer | Offret

The most famous Soviet film-maker since Sergei Eisenstein, Andrei Tarkovsky (the son of noted poet Arseniy Tarkovsky) studied music and Arabic in Moscow before enrolling in the Soviet film school VGIK. He shot to international attention with his first feature, Ivan's Childhood (1962), which won the...

The Mirror (1975) Andrei Rublev (1966) Solaris (1972) Ivan's Childhood (1962 Stalker (1979)

41. Ernst Lubitsch

Director | To Be or Not to Be

From Ernst Lubitsch's experiences in Sophien Gymnasium (high school) theater, he decided to leave school at the age of 16 and pursue a career on the stage. He had to compromise with his father and keep the account books for the family tailor business while he acted in cabarets and music halls at ...

The Shop Around the Corner (1940) To Be or Not to Be (1942) Ninotchka (1939) Heaven Can Wait (1943) The Merry Widow (1934)

42. Luchino Visconti

Writer | Il gattopardo

Born in his ancestral palazzo, situated in the same Milanese square as both the opera house La Scala and the Milan Cathedral, Luchino Visconti (1906 - 1976) was raised under the auspices of aristocratic privilege, theater and Catholicism. This triangulation of monuments would create an equally ...

Death in Venice (1971) The Leopard (1963) Rocco and His Brothers (1960) Senso (1954)

43. Otto Preminger

Actor | Stalag 17

Otto Ludwig Preminger was born in Wiznitz, Bukovina, Austria-Hungary. His father was a prosecutor, and Otto originally intended to follow his father into a law career; however, he fell in love with the theater in his 20's and became one of the most imaginative stage producers and directors. He was ...

Laura (1944) Anatomy of a Murder (1959) Angel Face (1952) The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell (1955) Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950) Fallen Angel (1945) Advise & Consent (1962) In Harm's Way (1965)

44. Charles Chaplin

Writer | The Great Dictator

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 ...

City Lights (1931) The Gold Rush (1925) The Kid (1921) A Countess from Hong Kong (1967) Modern Times (1936) The Circus (1928) The Great Dictator (1940) Shoulder Arms (1918)

45. Yasujirô Ozu

Writer | Tôkyô monogatari

Tokyo-born Yasujiro Ozu was a movie buff from childhood, often playing hooky from school in order to see Hollywood movies in his local theatre. In 1923 he landed a job as a camera assistant at Shochiku Studios in Tokyo. Three years later, he was made an assistant director and directed his first ...

Tokyo Story (1953) Floating Weeds (1959) The End of Summer (1961) Tôkyô boshoku (1957) Late Spring (1949) Early Summer (1951)

46. John Sturges

Director | The Great Escape

John Sturges was an American film director, mostly remembered for his outstanding Western films. In 1992, Sturges was awarded a Golden Boot Award for his lifelong contribution to the Western genre.

Sturges was born in the village of Oak Park, Illinois, within the Chicago metropolitan area. By 1930, ...

The Great Escape (1963) The Magnificent Seven (1960) Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957) Last Train from Gun Hill (1959) Bad Day at Black Rock (1955) Ice Station Zebra (1968) The Eagle Has Landed (1976) Never So Few (1959) Joe Kidd (1972) Jeopardy (1953) Mystery Street (1950)

47. Stanley Kramer

Producer | Judgment at Nuremberg

Stanley Kramer was born on September 29, 1913 in Hell's Kitchen [now Clinton], Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA. He was a producer and director, known for Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967) and Inherit the Wind (1960). He was married to Karen Sharpe, Anne P. ...

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) Judgement at Nuremberg (1961) The Defiant Ones (1958) Inherit the Wind (1960) Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967)

48. Michael Curtiz

Director | Casablanca

Curtiz began acting in and then directing films in his native Hungary in 1912. After WWI, he continued his filmmaking career in Austria and Germany and into the early 1920s when he directed films in other countries in Europe. Moving to the US in 1926, he started making films in Hollywood for Warner...

Casablanca (1942) Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) We're No Angels (1955) Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) Captain Blood (1935) The Sea Hawk (1940) The Comancheros (1961) The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) The Egyptian (1954)

49. Wim Wenders

Director | Der Himmel über Berlin

Wim Wenders is an Oscar-nominated German filmmaker who was born Ernst Wilhelm Wenders on August 14, 1945 in Düsseldorf, which then was located in the British Occupation Zone of what became the Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Federal Republic of Germany, known colloquially as West Germany until ...

Paris, Texas (1984) Kings of the Road (1976) Alice in the Cities (1974) Wings of Desire (1987) Tokyo-Ga (1985) The American Friend (1977) Lisbon Story (1994)

50. Anthony Mann

Director | El Cid

Anthony Mann was born on June 30, 1906 in San Diego, California, USA. He was a director and writer, known for El Cid (1961), Men in War (1957) and The Glenn Miller Story (1954). He was married to Anna, Sara Montiel and Mildred Mann. He died on April 29, 1967 in London, England.

The Man from Laramie (1955) T-Men (1947) Winchester '73 (1950) The Far Country (1954) The Naked Spur (1953) Bend of the River (1952) El Cid (1961) Raw Deal (1948) Desperate(1947) The Glenn Miller Story(1954)

51. Blake Edwards

Writer | The Pink Panther Strikes Again

Blake Edwards' stepfather's father J. Gordon Edwards was a silent screen director, and his stepfather Jack McEdward was a stage director and movie production manager. Blake acted in a number films, beginning with Ten Gentlemen from West Point (1942) and wrote a number of others, beginning with ...

The Party (1968) Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) The Pink Panther (1963) A Shot in the Dark (1964) The Great Race (1965) The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976) Return of the Pink Panther (1975) Mister Cory(1957) What Did You Do in the War, Daddy?(1966)

52. Nicholas Ray

Director | Rebel Without a Cause

Nicholas Ray was born Raymond Nicholas Kienzle in 1911, in small-town Galesville, Wisconsin, to Lena (Toppen) and Raymond Joseph Kienzle, a contractor and builder. He was of German and Norwegian descent. Ray's early experience with film came with some radio broadcasting in high school. He left the ...

Johnny Guitar (1954) On Dangerous Ground (1952) In a Lonely Place (1950) Rebel Without a Cause (1955) They Live by Night (1948) Bigger than Life (1956) Party Girl (1958) The Lusty Men (1952) The True Story of Jesse James(1957)

53. Robert Bresson

Writer | Au hasard Balthazar

Robert Bresson trained as a painter before moving into films as a screenwriter, making a short film (atypically a comedy), Public Affairs (1934) in 1934. After spending more than a year as a German POW during World War II, he made his debut with Angels of Sin (1943) in 1943. His next film, The ...

Au hasard Balthazar (1966) A Man Escaped (1956) Diary of a Country Priest (1951)

54. Vsevolod Pudovkin

Director | Admiral Nakhimov

Vsevolod Pudovkin was born on February 28, 1893 in Penza, Russian Empire [now Russia]. He was a director and actor, known for Admiral Nakhimov (1947), Zhukovsky (1950) and Minin i Pozharskiy (1939). He was married to Anna Zemtsova. He died on June 30, 1953 in Jurmala, Latvian SSR, USSR [now Latvia].

Mother (1926) The End of St. Petersburg [with Mikhail Doller] (1927) Chess Fever [with Nikolai Shpikovsky] (1925) Storm over Asia (1928)

55. William A. Wellman

Director | A Star Is Born

William Wellman, the Oscar-winning screenwriter-director of the original A Star Is Born (1937), was called "Wild Bill" during his World War I service as an aviator, a nickname that persisted in Hollywood due to his larger-than-life personality and lifestyle.

A leap-year baby born in 1896 on the 29th...

The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) The Public Enemy (1931) Battleground (1949) Wings (1927) A Star Is Born (1937) Nothing Sacred (1937) The Story of G.I. Joe (1945) Beau Geste (1939)

56. Basil Dearden

Director | Sapphire

A former stage director, Basil Dearden entered films as an assistant to director Basil Dean (he changed his name from Dear to avoid being confused with Dean). Dearden worked his way up the ladder and directed (with Will Hay) his first film in 1941; two years later he directed his first film on his ...

The League of Gentlemen (1960) Khartoum (1966) Sapphire (1959) The Smallest Show on Earth (1957) The Secret Partner(1961) Victim (1961) Saraband for Dead Lovers(1948)

57. Kenji Mizoguchi

Director | Ugetsu monogatari

Coming from a lower class family Mizoguchi entered the production company Nikkatsu as an actor specialized in female roles. Later he became an assistant director and made his first film in 1922. Although he filmed almost 90 movies in the silent era, only his last 12 productions are really known ...

Ugetsu (1953) Street of Shame (1956) The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums (1939) Sansho the Bailiff (1954) A Geisha (1953) Sisters of the Gion (1936)

58. Carol Reed

Director | The Third Man

Carol Reed was the second son of stage actor, dramatics teacher and impresario founder of the Royal School of Dramatic Art Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree. Reed was one of Tree's six illegitimate children with Beatrice Mae Pinney, who Tree established in a second household apart from his married life. ...

The Third Man (1949) Odd Man Out (1947) The Man Between(1953) Oliver! (1968) Trapeze(1956) Outcast of the Islands (1951) The Way Ahead (1944)

59. King Vidor

Director | War and Peace

King Vidor was an American film director, film producer, and screenwriter of Hungarian descent. He was born in Galveston, Texas to lumberman Charles Shelton Vidor and his wife Kate Wallis. King's paternal grandfather Károly (Charles) Vidor had fled Hungary as a refugee following the failed ...

The Crowd (1928) The Fountainhead (1949) Duel in the Sun (1946) The Big Parade (1925) The Texas Rangers(1936) Man Without a Star(1955) Northwest Passage (1940) Our Daily Bread (1934)

60. Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Writer | All About Eve

Born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, on February 11, 1909, Joseph Leo Mankiewicz first worked for the movies as a translator of intertitles, employed by Paramount in Berlin, the UFA's American distributor at the time (1928). He became a dialoguist, then a screenwriter on numerous Paramount ...

All About Eve (1950) The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947) 5 Fingers (1952) Guys and Dolls (1955)

61. Raoul Walsh

Editor | The Birth of a Nation

Raoul Walsh's 52-year directorial career made him a Hollywood legend. Walsh was also an actor: He appeared in the first version of W. Somerset Maugham's "Rain" renamed Sadie Thompson (1928) opposite Gloria Swanson in the title role. He would have played the Cisco Kid in his own film In Old Arizona ...

The Roaring Twenties (1939) White Heat (1949) They Drive by Night (1940) High Sierra (1941) Gentleman Jim (1942) Objective, Burma! (1945) Sadie Thompson(1928) Northern Pursuit(1943) The Revolt of Mamie Stover(1956)

62. Vincente Minnelli

Director | An American in Paris

Born Lester Anthony Minnelli in Chicago on February 28 1903, his father Vincent was a musical conductor of the Minnelli Brothers' Tent Theater. Wanting to pursue an artistic career, Minelli worked in the costume department of the Chicago Theater, then on Broadway during the depression as a set ...

The Band Wagon (1953) An American in Paris (1951) Some Came Running (1958) The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) Lust for Life (1956) Father of the Bride (1950) Two Weeks in Another Town(1962)

63. Robert Aldrich

Director | Emperor of the North Pole

Robert Aldrich entered the film industry in 1941 when he got a job as a production clerk at RKO Radio Pictures. He soon worked his way up to script clerk, then became an assistant director, a production manager and an associate producer. He began writing and directing for TV series in the early ...

The Dirty Dozen (1967) The Flight of the Phoenix (1965) What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) Kiss Me Deadly (1955) Ulzana's Raid(1972) The Longest Yard (1974) Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964)

64. Michael Powell

Director | Peeping Tom

The son of Thomas William Powell and Mabel (nee Corbett). Michael Powell was always a self-confessed movie addict. He was brought up partly in Canterbury ("The Garden of England") and partly in the south of France (where his parents ran a hotel). Educated at Kings School, Canterbury and Dulwich ...

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp(1943) The Red Shoes(1948) Peeping Tom (1960) They're a Weird Mob(1966)

65. 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...

The Social Network (2010) The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011) Se7en (1995) Gone Girl (2014) Zodiac (2007) Panic Room(2002) Mank(2020)

66. Henry King

Director | The Song of Bernadette

For more than three decades, Henry King was the most versatile and reliable (not to mention hard-working) contract director on the 20th Century-Fox lot. His tenure lasted from 1930 to 1961, spanning most of Hollywood's "golden" era. King was renowned as a specialist in literary adaptations (A Bell ...

The Gunfighter (1950) Twelve O'Clock High (1949) The Black Swan (1942) The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952) The Bravados(1958)

67. 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) Fahrenheit 451 (1966) Jules and Jim (1962) Shoot the Piano Player (1960) La peau douce(1964)

68. 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) Network (1976) Serpico (1973) Dog Day Afternoon (1975) Murder on the Orient Express (1974) The Pawnbroker (1964)

69. George Stevens

Director | Giant

George Stevens, a filmmaker known as a meticulous craftsman with a brilliant eye for composition and a sensitive touch with actors, is one of the great American filmmakers, ranking with John Ford, William Wyler and Howard Hawks as a creator of classic Hollywood cinema, bringing to the screen ...

Shane (1953) Giant (1956) Gunga Din (1939)

70. Cecil B. DeMille

Producer | The Ten Commandments

His parents Henry C. DeMille and Beatrice DeMille were playwrights. His father died when he was 12, and his mother supported the family by opening a school for girls and a theatrical company. Too young to enlist in the Spanish-American War, Cecil followed his brother William C. de Mille to the New ...

The Ten Commandments (1956) Cleopatra (1934) Samson and Delilah (1949) The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) Joan the Woman(1916) Union Pacific (1939) The Sign of the Cross (1932)

71. Don Siegel

Director | Dirty Harry

Don Siegel was educated at Cambridge University, England. In Hollywood from the mid-'30s, he began his career as an editor and second unit director. In 1945 he directed two shorts (Hitler Lives (1945) and Star in the Night (1945)) which both won Academy Awards. His first feature as a director was ...

Dirty Harry (1971) Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) The Killers (1964) Escape from Alcatraz (1979) Coogan's Bluff (1968) The Big Steal (1949) The Duel at Silver Creek(1952) Two Mules for Sister Sara(1960) Charley Varrick (1973)

72. John Frankenheimer

Director | The Manchurian Candidate

Born in New York and raised in Queens, John Frankenheimer wanted to become a professional tennis player. He loved movies and his favorite actor was Robert Mitchum. He decided he wanted to be an actor but then he applied for and was accepted in the Motion Picture Squadron of the Air Force where he ...

The Manchurian Candidate (1962) Ronin (1998) The Train (1964) Seven Days in May (1964) Seconds (1966) Birdman of Alcatraz (1962) Grand Prix (1966)

73. Max Ophüls

Director | La ronde

Director Max Ophüls was born Max Oppenheimer in Saarbrücken, Germany. He began his career as a stage actor and director in the golden twenties. He worked in cities such as Stuttgart, Dortmund, Wuppertal, Vienna, Frankfurt, Breslau and Berlin. In 1929 his son Marcel Ophüls was born in Frankfurt, ...

The Earrings of Madame de... (1953) Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948) Le plaisir (1952) Sans lendemain(1939) Everybody's Woman (1934) Caught (1949)

74. Andrzej Wajda

Director | Katyn

Andrzej Wajda is an Academy Award-winning director. He is the most prominent filmmaker in Poland known for The Promised Land (1975), Man of Iron (1981), and Katyn (2007).

He was Born on March 6, 1926, in Suwalki, Poland. His mother, Aniela Wajda, was a teacher at a Ukrainian school. His father, ...

Ashes and Diamonds (1958) Kanał (1957) A Generation (1955) Man of Iron (1981) Katyń (2007) Innocent Sorcerers (1960)

75. Mervyn LeRoy

Producer | The Wizard of Oz

The great San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906 was a tragedy for Mervyn LeRoy. While he and his father managed to survive, they lost everything they had. To make money, LeRoy sold newspapers and entered talent contests as a singer. When he entered vaudeville, his act was "LeRoy and Cooper--Two...

Little Caesar (1931) Mister Roberts [with John Ford] (1955) I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932) Quo Vadis (1951) The FBI Story(1959) Waterloo Bridge (1940) Gypsy(1962)

76. Tony Scott

Producer | Domino

Tony Scott was a British-born film director and producer. He was the youngest of three brothers, one of whom is fellow film director Ridley Scott. He was born in North Shields, Northumberland, England to parents Jean and Colonel Francis Percy Scott. As a result of his father's career in the British...

True Romance (1993) Enemy of the State (1998) Crimson Tide (1995) Top Gun (1986) Man on Fire (2004) The Last Boy Scout (1991)

77. Frank Capra

Director | It's a Wonderful Life

One of seven children, Frank Capra was born on May 18, 1897, in Bisacquino, Sicily. On May 10, 1903, his family left for America aboard the ship Germania, arriving in New York on May 23rd. "There's no ventilation, and it stinks like hell. They're all miserable. It's the most degrading place you ...

It Happened One Night (1934) Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) It's a Wonderful Life (1946) Pocketful of Miracles(1961) Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)

78. Alexander Mackendrick

Writer | The Man in the White Suit

One of the most distinguished (if frequently overlooked) directors ever to emerge from the British film industry, Alexander Mackendrick, was in fact born in the US (to Scottish parents), but grew up in his native Scotland, where he studied at the Glasgow School of Art. He started out as a ...

Sweet Smell of Success (1957) The Man in the White Suit (1951) The Ladykillers (1955) Whisky Galore! (1949) A High Wind in Jamaica(1965) Don't Make Waves(1967)

79. Dziga Vertov

Director | Chelovek s kino-apparatom

Dziga Vertov was born on January 2, 1896 in Bialystok, Grodno Governorate, Russian Empire [now Podlaskie, Poland]. He was a director and writer, known for Man with a Movie Camera (1929), Three Songs About Lenin (1934) and The Sixth Part of the World (1926). He was married to Elizaveta Svilova. He ...

Man with a Movie Camera (1929) Forward, Soviet! (1926) Kino Eye (1924) Three Songs About Lenin (1934) The Eleventh Year (1928) A Sixth Part of the World (1926) Kino-pravda no. 21 (1925)

80. Michael Moore

Director | Bowling for Columbine

Michael Francis Moore was born in Flint, Michigan on April 23, 1954, and was raised in its Davison suburb. He is the son of Helen Veronica (Wall), a secretary, and Francis Richard Moore, who worked on an auto assembly line. He has Irish, as well as English and Scottish, ancestry.

Moore studied ...

Bowling for Columbine (2002) Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) Roger & Me (1989) Sicko (2007) Fahrenheit 11/9 (2018)

81. J. Lee Thompson

Director | The Guns of Navarone

J. Lee Thompson was born on August 1, 1914 in Bristol, England, UK. He was a director and writer, known for The Guns of Navarone (1961), Woman in a Dressing Gown (1957) and Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972). He was married to Penny Thompson, Florence (Bill) Bailey, Lucille Kelly and Joan ...

The Guns of Navarone (1961) Ice Cold in Alex (1958) Cape Fear (1962) Tiger Bay (1959) Mackenna's Gold (1969)

82. William Friedkin

Director | To Live and Die in L.A.

Friedkin's mother was an operating room nurse. His father was a merchant seaman, semi-pro softball player and ultimately sold clothes in a men's discount chain. Ultimately, his father never earned more than $50/week in his whole life and died indigent. Eventually young Will became infatuated with ...

The French Connection (1971) The Exorcist (1973) To Live and Die in L.A. (1985) Sorcerer (1977)

83. Robert Wise

Director | West Side Story

Robert Earl Wise was born on September 10, 1914 in Winchester, Indiana, the youngest of three sons of Olive R. (Longenecker) and Earl Waldo Wise, a meat packer. His parents were both of Pennsylvania Dutch (German) descent. At age nineteen, the avid moviegoer came into the film business through an ...

West Side Story [with Jerome Robbins] (1961) The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) The Sand Pebbles (1966) The Sound of Music (1965) The Set-Up (1949) Odds Against Tomorrow(1959) Born to Kill(1947)

84. Fred Zinnemann

Director | A Man for All Seasons

Initially grew up wanting to be a violinist, but while at the University of Vienna decided to study law. While doing so, he became increasingly interested in American film and decided that was what he wanted to do. He became involved in European filmaking for a short time before going to America to...

From Here to Eternity (1953) High Noon (1952) Act of Violence (1948) The Sundowners (1960) A Hatful of Rain(1957)

85. Jacques Tourneur

Director | Cat People

Born in Paris in 1904, Tourneur went to Hollywood with his father, director Maurice Tourneur around 1913. He started out as a script clerk and editor for his father, then graduated to such jobs as directing shorts (often with the pseudonym Jack Turner), both in France and America. He was hired to ...

Out of the Past (1947) The Leopard Man (1943) Stars in My Crown (1950) Night of the Demon (1957) I Walked with a Zombie (1943) Cat People (1942)

86. 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...

Nashville (1975) Short Cuts (1993) McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) M·A·S·H (1970) The Long Goodbye (1973) The Player (1992)

87. Pier Paolo Pasolini

Writer | Il Decameron

Pier Paolo Pasolini achieved fame and notoriety long before he entered the film industry. A published poet at 19, he had already written numerous novels and essays before his first screenplay in 1954. His first film Accattone (1961) was based on his own novel and its violent depiction of the life ...

The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964) Mamma Roma (1962)

88. Henry Hathaway

Director | True Grit

Henry Hathaway, son of a stage actress and manager, started his career as a child actor in westerns directed by Allan Dwan. His movie career was interrupted by World War I. After his discharge he briefly tried a career in finance but returned to Hollywood to work as an assistant director under such...

Kiss of Death (1947) True Grit (1969) The Sons of Katie Elder (1965) Call Northside 777 (1948) How the West Was Won [with John Ford & George Marshall] (1962) North to Alaska(1960) The House on 92nd Street (1945) 5 Card Stud(1968)

89. Franklin J. Schaffner

Director | Planet of the Apes

Franklin J. Schaffner was one of the most innovative creative minds in the early days of American network television, utilizing a moving camera in the days when most television directors kept the camera static. His eye for visuals was developed in the dozens of live television programs he directed ...

Patton (1970) Planet of the Apes (1968) The War Lord (1965) The Best Man (1964) Papillon (1973)

90. 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) Carlito's Way (1993) Mission: Impossible (1996) Carrie (1976) Blow Out (1981) Wise Guys (1986)

91. 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...

Out of Africa (1985) Tootsie (1982) Three Days of the Condor (1975) The Way We Were (1973) The Firm (1993) This Property Is Condemned(1966) Absence of Malice (1981) The Scalphunters(1968)

92. Akira Kurosawa

Writer | Kakushi-toride no san-akunin

After training as a painter (he storyboards his films as full-scale paintings), Kurosawa entered the film industry in 1936 as an assistant director, eventually making his directorial debut with Sanshiro Sugata (1943). Within a few years, Kurosawa had achieved sufficient stature to allow him greater...

Seven Samurai (1954) Ran (1985) High and Low (1963) Ikiru (1952) Rashōmon (1950) Yôjinbô (1961)

93. Douglas Sirk

Director | Schlußakkord

Film director Douglas Sirk, whose reputation blossomed in the generation after his 1959 retirement from Hollywood filmmaking, was born Hans Detlef Sierck on April 26, 1897, in Hamburg, Germany, to a journalist. Both of his parents were Danish, and the future director would make movies in German, ...

Imitation of Life (1959) Written on the Wind (1956)

94. Delmer Daves

Writer | An Affair to Remember

Although Delmer Daves obtained a law degree at Stanford University, he never had the opportunity to use it; while still in college, he obtained a job as a prop boy on The Covered Wagon (1923) and after graduation was hired by several film companies as a technical advisor on films with a college ...

Broken Arrow (1950) 3:10 to Yuma (1957) Dark Passage (1947) Destination Tokyo (1943) The Hanging Tree (1959) Jubal (1956) Cowboy (1958)

95. 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 ...

One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) Amadeus (1984) Man on the Moon (1999) The Firemen's Ball (1967) The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996) Ragtime (1981)

96. 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 ...

Halloween (1978) The Thing (1982) Escape from New York (1981) Big Trouble in Little China (1986) Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) Starman (1984) Christine (1983)

97. Jim Jarmusch

Director | Paterson

Moved to New York City at the age of seventeen from Akron, Ohio. Graduated from Columbia University with a B.A. in English, class of '75. Without any prior film experience, he was accepted into the Tisch School of the Arts, New York.

Stranger than Paradise (1984) Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999) Dead Man (1995) Night on Earth (1991) Broken Flowers (2005) Coffee and Cigarettes (2003) Paterson (2016) Mystery Train (1989)

98. Christopher Nolan

Writer | Tenet

Best known for his cerebral, often nonlinear, storytelling, acclaimed Academy Award winner writer/director/producer Sir Christopher Nolan CBE was born in London, England. Over the course of more than 25 years of filmmaking, Nolan has gone from low-budget independent films to working on some of the ...

The Dark Knight (2008) Dunkirk (2017) Tenet(2020) Batman Begins (2005) The Dark Knight Rises (2012) Inception (2010) Memento (2000)

99. Samuel Fuller

Writer | Shock Corridor

At age 17, Samuel Fuller was the youngest reporter ever to be in charge of the events section of the New York Journal. After having participated in the European battle theater in World War II, he directed some minor action productions for which he mostly wrote the scripts himself and which he also ...

Pickup on South Street (1953) Shock Corridor (1963) Underworld U.S.A. (1961) Fixed Bayonets! (1951) The Naked Kiss (1964) I Shot Jesse James (1949) Merrill's Marauders (1962) Forty Guns (1957)

100. 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 ...

Ed Wood (1994) Batman (1989) Big Fish (2003) Batman Returns (1992) Sleepy Hollow (1999)