PEOPLE KNOWN FOR: awards - Oscar
English-born American director
Alfred Hitchcock was an English-born American motion-picture director whose suspenseful films and television programs won immense popularity and critical acclaim over a long and tremendously productive...
American film director and producer
Steven Spielberg is an American motion-picture director and producer whose diverse films—which ranged from science-fiction fare, including such classics as Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and...
American actor and director
Woody Allen is an American motion-picture director, screenwriter, actor, comedian, playwright, and author who is best known for his bittersweet comic films containing elements of parody, slapstick, and...
American actor, director, and writer
Orson Welles was an American motion-picture actor, director, producer, and writer. His innovative narrative techniques and use of photography, dramatic lighting, and music to further the dramatic line...
American director
Martin Scorsese is an American filmmaker known for his harsh, often violent depictions of American culture. From the 1970s, Scorsese created a body of work that was ambitious, bold, and brilliant. But...
American director
Vincente Minnelli was an American motion-picture director who infused a new sophistication and vitality into filmed musicals in the 1940s and ’50s. (Read Martin Scorsese’s Britannica essay on film preservation.)...
American director, writer, and actor
John Huston was an American motion-picture director, writer, and actor whose taut dramas were among the most popular Hollywood films from the early 1940s to the mid-1980s. Many of his films were literary...
American film director
Frank Capra was an American motion-picture director who was the most prominent filmmaker of the 1930s, during which he won three Academy Awards as best director. His most-beloved films, many of which were...
Hungarian-American director, actor, and writer
Michael Curtiz was a Hungarian-born American motion-picture director whose prolific output as a contract director for Warner Brothers consisted of numerous genre films along with a string of motion picture...
American singer, songwriter, and bandleader
Bruce Springsteen is an American singer, songwriter, and bandleader who became the archetypal rock performer of the 1970s and ’80s. With his poetic lyrics describing the lives of everyday Americans, his...
Irish dramatist and critic
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish comic dramatist, literary critic, and socialist propagandist, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925. (Read George Bernard Shaw’s 1926 Britannica essay on socialism.)...
American director
William Wyler was a German-born American director of motion pictures that combined a high degree of technical polish with a clear narrative style and sensitive handling of human relationships. Most of...
American musician
Bob Dylan is an American folksinger and songwriter who moved from folk to rock music in the 1960s, infusing the lyrics of rock and roll, theretofore concerned mostly with boy-girl romantic innuendo, with...
American director and producer
Billy Wilder was an Austrian-born American motion-picture scenarist, director, and producer known for films that humorously treat subjects of controversy and offer biting indictments of hypocrisy in American...
American singer and actor
Frank Sinatra was an American singer and motion-picture actor who, through a long career and a very public personal life, became one of the most sought-after performers in the entertainment industry; he...
American director and screenwriter
Francis Ford Coppola is an American motion-picture director, writer, and producer whose films range from sweeping epics to small-scale character studies. As the director of films such as The Godfather...
British actor, director, writer, and composer
Charlie Chaplin was a British comedian, producer, writer, director, and composer who is widely regarded as the greatest comic artist of the screen and one of the most important figures in motion-picture...
American actor and director
Clint Eastwood is an American film actor who emerged as one of the most popular Hollywood stars in the 1960s, known for his portrayal of tough individualists, first as The Man with No Name in Sergio Leone’s...
American director and producer
Mervyn LeRoy was an American motion-picture director whose wide variety of films included dramas, romances, epics, comedies, and musicals. He also produced films, including the classic The Wizard of Oz...
American director
Robert Altman was an unconventional and independent American motion-picture director, whose works emphasize character and atmosphere over plot in exploring themes of innocence, corruption, and survival....
American director
George Stevens was an American director known for films that exhibited intelligence, great humanism, and brilliant camera techniques. His classic movies include the screwball comedy Woman of the Year (1942),...
American film director
George Cukor was an American motion-picture director who produced films of high quality for 50 years, combining his skill in working with actors, especially actresses, and his careful attention to details....
American director
Mike Nichols was an American motion-picture, television, and stage director whose productions focus on the absurdities and horrors of modern life as revealed in personal relationships. (Read Martin Scorsese’s...
Swedish film director
Ingmar Bergman was a Swedish film writer and director who achieved world fame with such films as Det sjunde inseglet (1957; The Seventh Seal); Smultronstället (1957; Wild Strawberries); the trilogy Såsom...
American film director and producer
Frank Borzage was an American motion-picture director and producer noted for his romantic transcendentalism and technically impeccable filmmaking. (Read Martin Scorsese’s Britannica essay on film preservation.)...
American actor and philanthropist
Paul Newman was an American actor and director whose striking good looks, intelligence, and charisma became hallmarks in a film career that spanned more than 50 years, during which time he became known...
American director
Fred Zinnemann was an Austrian-born American motion-picture director whose films are distinguished by realism of atmosphere and characterization and often grounded in crises of conscience. He was nominated...
American director and author
Elia Kazan was a Turkish-born American film director and author noted for his successes on the stage—especially with plays by Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller—as well as for his critically acclaimed...
American film producer
Walt Disney was an American motion-picture and television producer and showman, famous as a pioneer of animated cartoon films and as the creator of such cartoon characters as Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck....
American director and producer
Robert Wise was an American movie director and producer whose many works include successful films of nearly every genre, though he is best remembered for the two musicals for which he won Academy Awards...
American director
William Wellman was an American film director whose more than 80 movies included Hollywood classics of documentary-like realism and who was ranked as an action director alongside Howard Hawks and John...
American film director
Cecil B. DeMille was an American motion-picture producer-director whose use of spectacle attracted vast audiences and made him a dominant figure in Hollywood for almost five decades. (Read Martin Scorsese’s...
American filmmaker
Joseph L. Mankiewicz was an American producer, director, and screenwriter known for his witty, literary, urbane dialogue and memorable characters. He worked with many of Hollywood’s major stars and earned...
British director
John Schlesinger was an English film director known for a wide variety of sensitively told stories set in his homeland and in the United States. Schlesinger’s father was a pediatrician, and both of his...
American director, producer, and actor
Sydney Pollack was an American director, producer, and actor who helmed a number of popular films, including The Way We Were (1973), Tootsie (1982), Out of Africa (1985), and The Firm (1993). Although...
American singer, songwriter, composer, and actor
Paul Williams is an American singer, songwriter, composer, and actor known for his long and storied career in which he has written numerous award-winning songs, scored films, and acted in films and television....
American director
Leo McCarey was an American director and writer who was perhaps best known for his light comedies, notably the classics Duck Soup (1933) and The Awful Truth (1937), but who also made several popular romances...
Australian actress
Cate Blanchett is an Australian actress known for her multidimensional characters and wide range of roles. Her breakthrough came playing a young Queen Elizabeth I in Elizabeth (1998), and she later appeared...
American director, producer, screenwriter, and actor
Mel Brooks is an American film and television director, producer, writer, and actor whose motion pictures elevated outrageousness and vulgarity to high comic art. (Read Martin Scorsese’s Britannica essay...
American director, producer, and screenwriter
George Lucas is an American motion-picture director, producer, and screenwriter who created several of the most popular films in history. The son of a small-town stationer and a mother who was often hospitalized...
American director
Barbara Kopple is an American director and producer who is best known for her riveting documentaries that chronicle battles in the American labor movement in the 1970s and ’80s. She was the first woman...
American director
John Ford was an iconic American film director, best known today for his westerns, though none of the films that won him the Academy Award for best direction—The Informer (1935), The Grapes of Wrath (1940),...
American singer-songwriter and actress
Lady Gaga is an American singer-songwriter and performance artist, known for her flamboyant costumes, provocative lyrics, and strong vocal talents, who achieved enormous popular success in the early 21st...
American choreographer and director
Bob Fosse was an American dancer, choreographer, and director who revolutionized musicals with his distinct style of dance—including his frequent use of props, signature moves, and provocative steps—and...
French director
Jean-Luc Godard was a French Swiss film director who came to prominence with the New Wave group in France during the late 1950s and the ’60s. Godard spent his formative years on the Swiss side of Lake...
Australian actress
Nicole Kidman is an American-born Australian actress known for her considerable range and versatility as well as for her glamorous looks and cool demeanour. Kidman was born in Honolulu to Australian parents....
American actor, writer, and director
Ben Affleck is an American actor and filmmaker who has played leading roles in action, drama, and comedy films but who is perhaps more renowned for his work as a screenwriter, director, and producer. He...
American director
Preston Sturges was an American motion-picture director, screenwriter, and playwright best known for a series of hugely popular satirical comedies that he made in the early 1940s. Sturges made his mark...
American actress
Meryl Streep is an American film actress known for her masterly technique, expertise with dialects, and subtly expressive face. She has received an unprecedented 21 Academy Award nominations, and she won...
American film director
Lewis Milestone was a Russian-born American film director who was especially known for his realistic dramas, many of which were literary adaptations. His most-notable films include All Quiet on the Western...