List of most popular directors (all time)

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

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...

Christopher Jonathan James Nolan (born 30 July 1970) is an English-American film director, screenwriter, and producer. He has created several of the most commercially successful films of the early 21st century. His nine films have...

Heywood "Woody" Allen (born Allan Stewart Konigsberg, December 1, 1935) is an American actor, writer, director, comedian and playwright, whose career spans more than 50 years.

Jeffrey Jacob "J. J." Abrams (born June 27, 1966) is an American director, producer, writer, actor, author and composer, best known for his work in the genres of action, drama, and science fiction. Abrams wrote and/or produced fea...

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...

Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) was an English film director and producer, often nicknamed "The Master of Suspense".

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...

Angelina Jolie Pitt (née Voight; June 4, 1975) is an American actress, filmmaker, and humanitarian. She has received an Academy Award, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and three Golden Globe Awards, and has been cited as Hollywood'...

James Francis Cameron (born August 16, 1954) is a Canadian filmmaker, inventor, engineer, philanthropist, and deep-sea explorer who has directed the two biggest box office films of all time (Avatar and Titanic). He first found maj...

George Walton Lucas, Jr. (born May 14, 1944) is an American filmmaker and entrepreneur. He is best known as the creator of the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises, as well as the founder of Lucasfilm and Industrial Light and Ma...

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

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

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...

Dr. George Miller (born 3 March 1945) is an Australian film director, screenwriter, producer, and former medical doctor. He is best known for his Mad Max franchise. Aside from the Mad Max films, Miller has been involved in a wide...

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

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...

Timothy Walter "Tim" Burton (born August 25, 1958) is an American film director, producer, artist, writer, and animator. He is known for his dark, gothic, macabre, and quirky horror and fantasy films such as the horror comedy fant...

David Keith Lynch (born January 20, 1946) is an American director, screenwriter, visual artist, musician, actor, and author. Known for his surrealist films, he has developed a unique cinematic style. The surreal and, in many cases...

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

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

Akira Kurosawa ( March 23, 1910 – September 6, 1998) was a Japanese filmmaker. Kurosawa directed 30 films in a career spanning 57 years.

Joseph Frank "Buster" Keaton (October 4, 1895 – February 1, 1966) was an American actor, vaudevillian, comedian, filmmaker, stunt performer, and writer. He was best known for his silent films, in which his trademark was physical c...

Andrew Stanton (born December 3, 1965) is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, and voice actor based at Pixar. His film work includes writing and directing Pixar's A Bug's Life (1998) (as co-director), Finding Nemo (...

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...

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...

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

Atom Egoyan, (born July 19, 1960) is a Canadian stage director and film director.

David Paul Cronenberg, (born March 15, 1943) is a Canadian filmmaker, screenwriter, and actor.

Denis Villeneuve (born October 3, 1967) is a French-Canadian film director and writer.

Werner Herzog Stipetić (born 5 September 1942), known as Werner Herzog, is a German film director, producer, screenwriter, author, actor and opera director.

Friedrich Christian Anton "Fritz" Lang (December 5, 1890 – August 2, 1976) was a German-Austrian filmmaker, screenwriter, and occasional film producer and actor.

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

Clinton "Clint" Eastwood, Jr. (born May 31, 1930) is an American actor, film director, producer, musician, and politician. He rose to international fame with his role as the Man with No Name in Sergio Leone's Dollars trilogy of sp...

Frank Miller (born January 27, 1957) is an American writer, artist, and film director best known for his dark comic book stories and graphic novels such as Ronin, Daredevil: Born Again, The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City and 300. H...

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...

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.

Thomas Joseph "Tom" McCarthy (born June 7, 1966) is an American film director, screenwriter, and actor who has appeared in several movies, including Meet the Parents and Good Night, and Good Luck, and television shows such as The...

Todd Haynes (born January 2, 1961) is an American independent film director and screenwriter. He is known for having directed the acclaimed films Safe (1995), Far from Heaven (2002), I'm Not There (2007), and Carol (2015). Haynes...

Adam McKay (born April 17, 1968) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, comedian, and actor. McKay served as head writer for the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live for two seasons. He has a comedy partners...

Alejandro González Iñárritu; credited since 2014 as Alejandro G. Iñárritu; born August 15, 1963) is a Mexican film director, producer, screenwriter, and former composer. He is the first Mexican director to be nominated for the Aca...

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...

Jaco Van Dormael (born 9 February 1957) is a Belgian film director, screenwriter and playwright. Van Dormael spent his childhood travelling around Europe, before going on to study filmmaking at the INSAS in Brussels, where he wrot...

Eli Raphael Roth (born April 18, 1972) is an American film director, producer, writer and actor. He is known for directing the horror film Hostel and its sequel, Hostel: Part II. He is also known for his role as Donny "The Bear Je...

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...

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...

Dennis Lee Hopper (May 17, 1936 – May 29, 2010) was an American actor, filmmaker, photographer, and artist. He attended the Actors Studio, making his first television appearance in 1954, and soon after appeared in two films with J...

Sydney Irwin Pollack (July 1, 1934 – May 26, 2008) was an American film director, producer and actor. Pollack directed more than 21 films and 10 television shows, acted in over 30 films or shows, and produced over 44 films. His 19...

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,...

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...