List of directors (all time)

Jean-Jacques Annaud (born 1 October 1943) is a French film director, screenwriter and producer, best known for directing Quest for Fire (1981), The Name of the Rose (1986), The Lover (1991), and Seven Years in Tibet (1997). Annaud...

Joseph James "Joe" Dante, Jr. (born November 28, 1946) is an American film director, producer, editor and actor. His films—notably Gremlins (1984)—often mix fantastical storylines with comedic elements. Dante's films include Piran...

John Howard Carpenter (born January 16, 1948) is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, editor and composer. Although Carpenter has worked in numerous film genres, he is most commonly associated with horror and science...

John Ford (February 1, 1894 – August 31, 1973) was an American film director. He made Westerns such as Stagecoach (1939), The Searchers (1956), and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), as well as adaptations of classic 20th-ce...

John Gavin Malkovich (born December 9, 1953) is an American actor and director. He has appeared in more than 70 motion pictures. For his roles in Places in the Heart and In the Line of Fire, he received Academy Award nominations...

Joseph Leonard Gordon-Levitt (born February 17, 1981) is an American actor and filmmaker. As a child actor, he appeared in the films A River Runs Through It, Angels in the Outfield and 10 Things I Hate About You, and as Tommy Solo...

Keanu Charles Reeves (born September 2, 1964) is a Lebanese-born Canadian actor, producer, director and musician. Reeves is most well known for his acting career, beginning in 1985 and spanning for more than three decades. He gain...

Kevin Michael Costner (born January 18, 1955) is an American actor, film director, producer, musician, and singer. He has won two Academy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, and one Emmy Award, and has been nominated for three BAFT...

Lars von Trier (born Lars Trier; 30 April 1956) is a Danish film director and screenwriter. He is closely associated with the Dogme 95 collective – an avant-garde filmmaking movement – although his own films have taken a variety o...

Lau Kar-leung (28 July 1934 – 25 June 2013), also known as Liu Chia-liang, was a Hong Kong-based Chinese actor, filmmaker, choreographer and martial artist. Lau is best known for the films he made in the 1970s and 1980s for the Sh...

Lee Edward Unkrich (born August 8, 1967) is an American director, film editor and screenwriter. He is a longtime member of the creative team at Pixar, where he started in 1994 as a film editor. He later began directing, first as c...

Leonard "Lenny" Abrahamson (born 30 November 1966) is an Irish film and television director. Abrahamson is known for his films Adam & Paul, Garage, What Richard Did and Room.

Leonard Simon Nimoy (March 26, 1931 – February 27, 2015) was an American actor, film director, photographer, author, singer, and songwriter. He was known for his role as Mr. Spock of the Star Trek franchise, a character he portray...

Luc Besson (born 18 March 1959) is a French film director, screenwriter, and producer.

Manoj Shyamalan (born 6 August 1970), known professionally as M. Night Shyamalan, is an Indian-American film director, screenwriter, producer and occasional actor.

Martin Charles Scorsese (born November 17, 1942) is an American director, producer, screenwriter, actor, and film historian, whose career spans more than 45 years.

Mel Colm-Cille Gerard Gibson (born January 3, 1956) is an American actor and filmmaker.

Michael Benjamin Bay (born February 17, 1965) is an American filmmaker. He is known for directing big-budget action films characterized by fast edits, stylistic visuals and extreme use of special effects. His films, which include...

Morgan Freeman is an American actor, film director, and narrator. Freeman has received Academy Award nominations for his performances in Street Smart, Driving Miss Daisy, The Shawshank Redemption and Invictus, and won the Best Sup...

Natalie Portman (born Neta-Lee Hershlag June 9, 1981) is an actress, producer and director with dual American and Israeli citizenship. Her first role was in the 1994 action thriller Léon: The Professional, opposite Jean Reno, but...

Neill Blomkamp (born 17 September 1979) is a South African-Canadian film director, film producer, screenwriter, and animator, Blomkamp employs a documentary-style, hand-held, cinéma vérité technique, blending naturalistic and phot...

Nicholas David Rowland "Nick" Cassavetes (Greek: Νικόλαος Δαβίδ Ρουλαντ "Νίκος" Κασσαβέτης; born May 21, 1959) is an American film actor, screenwriter, and filmmaker...

Nicolas Kim Coppola (born January 7, 1964), known professionally as Nicolas Cage, is an American actor and producer. He has performed in leading roles in a variety of films, ranging from romantic comedies and dramas to science fic...

George Orson Welles (May 6, 1915 – October 10, 1985) was an American actor, director, writer, and producer who worked in theatre, radio, and film.

Sir Peter Robert Jackson ONZ KNZM (born 31 October 1961) is a New Zealand filmmaker. He is best known as the director and producer of The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001–2003) and The Hobbit trilogy (2012–2014), both of which are...

Philip Seymour Hoffman (July 23, 1967 – February 2, 2014) was an American actor, director, and producer of film and theater. Best known for his distinctive supporting and character roles – typically lowlifes, bullies, and misfits...

Quentin Jerome Tarantino (born March 27, 1963) is an American film director, screenwriter, cinematographer, producer, and actor. His films are characterized by non-linear storylines, satirical subject matter, and an aestheticizati...

Ralph Bakshi (born October 29, 1938) is an American director of animated and live-action films. In the 1970s, he established an alternative to mainstream animation through independent and adult-oriented productions. Between 1972 a...

Richard Stuart Linklater (born July 30, 1960) is an American film director and screenwriter.

Ridley Scott (born 30 November 1937) is an English film director and producer. Following his commercial breakthrough with the science-fiction horror film Alien (1979), his best-known works are the neo-noir dystopian science fictio...

Rob Marshall (born October 17, 1960) is an American theater director, film director and choreographer. His most noted work is the 2002 Academy Award for Best Picture winner Chicago, for which he won a Directors Guild of America Aw...

Robert Bernard Altman (February 20, 1925 – November 20, 2006) was an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. He was nominated five times for the Academy Award for Best Director. He preferred large ensemble casts for hi...

Robert Anthony Rodríguez (born June 20, 1968) is an American filmmaker and musician. He shoots and produces many of his films in Mexico and his home state, Texas. Rodriguez directed the 1992 action film El Mariachi, which was a co...

Robert Lee Zemeckis (born May 14, 1952) is an American filmmaker and screenwriter. He has directed some of the biggest blockbuster hits of the past few decades. He first came to public attention in the 1980s as the director of Rom...

Roland Emmerich (born November 10, 1955) is a German film director, screenwriter, and producer. His films, most of which are English-language Hollywood productions, have made more than $3 billion worldwide, including just over $1...

Roman Polanski (born Rajmund Roman Thierry Polański, 18 August 1933) is a Paris-born Pole and, since 1976, naturalized French-Polish film director, producer, writer, and actor. Born in Paris to Polish parents, he moved with his fa...

Ron Fricke is an American film director and cinematographer, specializing in time-lapse photography and large format cinematography. He was the director of photography for Koyaanisqatsi (1982) and directed the purely cinematic non...

Ronald William "Ron" Howard (born March 1, 1954) is an American film director, producer, and actor, best known for playing two high-profile roles in television sitcoms in his childhood and early adulthood, and for directing a numb...

Samuel Alexander "Sam" Mendes, (born 1 August 1965) is an English stage and film director. He is best known for directing the comedy-drama film American Beauty (1999), which earned him the Academy Award and Golden Globe Award for...

Samuel M "Sam" Raimi (born October 23, 1959) is an American film director, producer, writer and actor.

Seth Aaron Rogen (born April 15, 1982) is a Canadian American actor, filmmaker, and comedian. Rogen began his career performing stand-up comedy during his teenage years, winning the Vancouver Amateur Comedy Contest in 1998. While...

Sharlto Copley (born November 27, 1973) is a South African actor, producer, and director who has produced and co-directed short films which have appeared at the Cannes Film Festival, as well as commercials and music videos. He is...

Sir Sidney Poitier, (born February 20, 1927), is a Bahamian-American actor, film director, author and diplomat. In 1964, Poitier became the first Bahamian and first African-American to win an Academy Award for Best Actor, for his...

Sion Sono (born December 18, 1961) is a Japanese filmmaker, author and poet.

Spike Jonze (born Adam Spiegel; October 22, 1969) is an American director, producer, screenwriter and actor, whose work includes music videos, commercials, film and television. He started his feature film directing career with Bei...

Stanley Kubrick (July 26, 1928 – March 7, 1999) was an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and editor who did much of his work in the United Kingdom. Kubrick's films covered a variety of genres, includi...

Stephen Chow (Chinese: 周星馳, Chow Sing-Chi; born 22 June 1962) is a Hong Kong actor, screenwriter, film director, producer and political adviser of Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference...

Steven Vincent "Steve" Buscemi (born December 13, 1957) is an American actor and film director. Buscemi has starred and supported in successful Hollywood and indie films, including Parting Glances, New York Stories, Mystery Train,...

Steven Andrew Soderbergh (born January 14, 1963) is an American film producer, director, screenwriter, cinematographer and editor.

Steven Allan Spielberg (born December 18, 1946) is an American filmmaker. He is also one of the co-founders of DreamWorks Studios.