PEOPLE KNOWN FOR: screenwriting
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, 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 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 author
William Faulkner was an American novelist and short-story writer who was awarded the 1949 Nobel Prize for Literature. As the eldest of the four sons of Murry Cuthbert and Maud Butler Falkner, William Faulkner...
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...
American director
Stanley Kubrick was an American motion-picture director and writer whose films are characterized by his dramatic visual style, meticulous attention to detail, and a detached, often ironic or pessimistic...
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...
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 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 author
After his debut in 1985 with the novel Less Than Zero, American writer Bret Easton Ellis was declared by many critics as the “voice of a generation.” Ellis’s darkly sardonic first novel captured the jaded...
Italian filmmaker
Federico Fellini was an Italian film director who was one of the most celebrated and singular filmmakers of the period after World War II. Influenced early in his career by the Neorealist movement, he...
American author
Joan Didion was an American novelist and essayist known for her lucid prose style and incisive depictions of social unrest and psychological fragmentation. She was one of the foremost voices of New Journalism,...
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 writer
Larry Kramer was an American playwright, screenwriter, and gay rights activist whose confrontational style of advocacy, while divisive, was credited by many with catalyzing the response to the HIV/AIDS...
Indian author and activist
Arundhati Roy is an Indian author and political activist who is best known for the Booker Prize-winning novel The God of Small Things (1997) and for her advocacy of environmental and human rights issues....
American author and director
Nicholas Ray was an American motion-picture writer and director whose reputation as one of the most expressive and distinctive filmmakers of the late 1940s and the ’50s is grounded on a clutch of stylish...
American film director, producer, and screenwriter
Blake Edwards was an American film director, producer, and screenwriter who was best known for the classic romantic comedy Breakfast at Tiffiany’s (1961) as well as the comedy The Pink Panther (1963) and...
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...
American director
John Frankenheimer was an American television and film director who was considered one of the most important and creatively gifted directors of the 1950s and ’60s. He was especially noted for such classic...
American director
Samuel Fuller was an American director known for his gritty action movies. Fuller left school at age 13 and became a copyboy for The New York Journal under editor Arthur Brisbane. While still in his teens,...
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...
American director and screenwriter
Brian De Palma is an American motion-picture director and screenwriter best noted for his usually stylish, often graphic horror-suspense films that draw heavily on the work of director Alfred Hitchcock....
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...
Greek director and screenwriter
Yorgos Lanthimos is a Greek director and screenwriter known for his surreal films that combine absurd scenarios, striking set designs, and stories of penetrating psychological insight. Lanthimos learned...
American director
Sam Peckinpah was an American motion-picture director and screenwriter who was known for ultraviolent but often lyrical films that explored issues of morality and identity. During World War II, Peckinpah...
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 film director
Peter Bogdanovich was an American director, critic, and actor noted for his attempts to revitalize film genres of the 1930s and ’40s. (Read Martin Scorsese’s Britannica essay on film preservation.) As...
American director, producer, and writer
Alan J. Pakula was an American motion-picture director, producer, and screenwriter who evoked exceptional performances from actors and actresses in the 16 films he directed, most notably in three dark,...
British author and scientist
Arthur C. Clarke was an English writer, notable for both his science fiction and his nonfiction. His best known works are the script he wrote with American film director Stanley Kubrick for 2001: A Space...
American cartoonist, writer, animator, and director
Frank Tashlin was an American cartoonist, writer, animator, and film director who specialized in broad satirical comedies. Tashlin directed his animated cartoons like live-action films—employing a wide...
American actor, writer, and director
Paul Mazursky was an American actor, writer, and director whose films, which often explored relationships, were known for their insight, satire, and compassion. After graduating from Brooklyn College in...
American actor
W.C. Fields was an actor whose flawless timing and humorous cantankerousness made him one of America’s greatest comedians. His real-life and screen personalities were often indistinguishable, and he is...
American producer, director, and writer
Ryan Murphy is a producer, director, and writer of television and film who has built a successful and prolific career by bringing the stories of marginalized characters to the mainstream and by exploring...
British writer
James Clavell was an Australian-born British author, director, and screenwriter best known for his popular action novels set within Asian cultures, in particular Shōgun (1975), which became an international...
Pakistani author
Saadat Hasan Manto was an Indo-Pakistani writer of Urdu fiction and nonfiction whose works presented untempered depictions of the grim realities of society, including sexual violence, prostitution, murder,...
American writer and director
Noah Baumbach established himself as a distinctive new voice in filmmaking with his self-aware, dialogue-heavy dramas about artists and intellectuals living in his home city of New York. Starting in 1995...
American musician, journalist, and author
James McBride is an American author and musician known for his acclaimed works of historical fiction and autobiography, including the best-selling memoir The Color of Water (1996) and the National Book...
American screenwriter, producer, and actor
Mike White is an American screenwriter, producer, and actor who created several successful films and television shows, including the musical-comedy film School of Rock (2003) and the award-winning anthology...
American actor, writer, director, and filmmaker
Taylor Sheridan is an American actor, writer, and director who first garnered attention for his roles on the television series Veronica Mars and Sons of Anarchy but found greater success behind the scenes,...
American actor, screenwriter, and producer
Matt Damon is an American actor, screenwriter, and producer who was noted for his clean-cut good looks and intelligent performances. He won an Academy Award for best original screenplay for Good Will Hunting...
American director and screenwriter
Edmund Goulding was a British-born American director and screenwriter who first gained notice for films aimed at a female audience but proved adept at a wide range of genres. Goulding began acting onstage...
American poet, memoirist, and actress
Maya Angelou was an American poet, memoirist, and actress whose several volumes of autobiography explore the themes of economic, racial, and sexual oppression. Her best-known work is the powerful memoir...
American director, screenwriter, and producer
Darren Aronofsky is an American director, screenwriter, and producer known for making psychologically intense and often surreal films, including Requiem for a Dream (2000) and The Whale (2022). He was...
American actor
Jack Nicholson is one of the most prominent American motion-picture actors of his generation, especially noted for his versatile portrayals of unconventional, alienated outsiders. Nicholson, whose father...
British actress and director
Emerald Fennell is an English actress, director, and writer known for her versatile talents and her provocative works exploring horror, revenge, gender, and social class. She directed and wrote the films...
American actress, writer, and producer
Issa Rae is an American writer, actress, and producer best known for her Web series The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl (2011–13) and her HBO television series Insecure (2016–21), both of which explore...