Academy Award for Best Director


The Academy Award for Best Director is an award presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. It is given in honor of a film director who has exhibited outstanding directing while working in the film industry.
The 1st Academy Awards ceremony was held in 1929 with the award being split into "Dramatic" and "Comedy" categories; Frank Borzage and Lewis Milestone won for 7th Heaven and Two Arabian Knights, respectively. However, these categories were merged for all subsequent ceremonies. Nominees are determined by single transferable vote within the directors branch of AMPAS; winners are selected by a plurality vote from the entire eligible voting members of the Academy.
For the first eleven years of the Academy Awards, directors were allowed to be nominated for multiple films in the same year. However, after the nomination of Michael Curtiz for two films, Angels with Dirty Faces and Four Daughters, at the 11th Academy Awards, the rules were revised so that an individual could only be nominated for one film at each ceremony. That rule has since been amended, although the only director who has received multiple nominations in the same year was Steven Soderbergh for Erin Brockovich and Traffic in 2000, winning the award for the latter. The Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture have been very closely linked throughout their history. Of the 92 films that have been awarded Best Picture, 66 have also been awarded Best Director.
Since its inception, the award has been given to 72 directors or directing teams. John Ford has received the most awards in this category with four. William Wyler was nominated on twelve occasions, more than any other individual. Damien Chazelle became the youngest director in history to receive this award, at the age of 32 for his work on La La Land. John Singleton became the youngest director to be nominated for this award, at age 24 for his work on Boyz n the Hood. Two directing teams have shared the award; Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins for West Side Story in 1961 and Joel and Ethan Coen for No Country for Old Men in 2007. The Coen brothers are the only siblings to have won the award. Kathryn Bigelow is the only woman to have won the award, for 2009's The Hurt Locker. As of the 2020 ceremony, Bong Joon-ho is the most recent winner in this category for his work on Parasite.

Winners and nominees

In the following table, the years are listed as per Academy convention, and generally correspond to the year of film release in Los Angeles County, California; the ceremonies are always held the following year. For the first five ceremonies, the eligibility period spanned twelve months from August 1 to July 31. For the 6th ceremony held in 1934, the eligibility period lasted from August 1, 1932, to December 31, 1933. Since the 7th ceremony held in 1935, the period of eligibility became the full previous calendar year from January 1 to December 31.
Indicates the winner of Best Picture

won in the "Dramatic" category at the first ceremony and later received a second award for Bad Girl.
won in the "Comedy" category at the first ceremony and later received a second award for All Quiet on the Western Front.
won two awards in this category for The Divine Lady and Cavalcade.
won three awards in this category, for It Happened One Night, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, and You Can't Take It with You.
has the most Best Director wins with four, winning in 1935, 1940, 1941, and 1952.
has the most nominations with twelve, winning in 1942, 1946, and 1959.
won for directing Casablanca.
was nominated eight times, winning twice.
won in 1947 for Gentleman's Agreement and again in 1954 for On the Waterfront.
received the award in 1948 for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
won twice, five years apart, for A Place in the Sun and Giant.
received two awards.
won for The Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia and was nominated for five other films.
earned two awards in this category, co-winning for West Side Story and winning for The Sound of Music.
won once in this category, co-winning for West Side Story.
won in 1964 for My Fair Lady.
won for 1967's The Graduate.
won in 1971 for The French Connection.
earned the award for The Godfather Part II.
won for both 1975's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and 1984's Amadeus.
received seven nominations in the category, winning only once.
won for Ordinary People.
won in 1981 for directing Reds.
won in 1982 for his epic biopic, Gandhi.
earned two awards in this category in the 1980s—one for Platoon, and the other for Born on the Fourth of July.
earned the award in 1990 for directing Dances with Wolves.
won for his direction of The Silence of the Lambs.
won in 1992 for Unforgiven and became the oldest director to win in the category with Million Dollar Baby in 2004.
, a two-time winner for Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan.
won in 1999 for his directorial debut—American Beauty.
won in 2002 for his direction of The Pianist.
won for .
has won twice in this category—in 2005 for Brokeback Mountain and in 2012 for Life of Pi.
has received nine nominations for Best Director, but has only won for The Departed in 2006.
is the first and only woman to date to win the award. She won for The Hurt Locker in 2009.
|thumb|Michel Hazanavicius became the first French director to win the award for his work on The Artist.
became the first Mexican director to win this award for his work on Gravity, before winning again in 2018 for Roma.
in France, September 2014|thumb|Damien Chazelle became the youngest winner of the category after winning this award for La La Land.
won this award for directing The Shape of Water.

Multiple wins and nominations

The following individuals have won multiple Best Director awards:
WinsDirector
4
John Ford
3Frank Capra
3William Wyler
2Frank Borzage
2Alfonso Cuarón
2Clint Eastwood
2Miloš Forman
2Alejandro G. Iñárritu
2Elia Kazan
2David Lean
2Ang Lee
2Frank Lloyd
2Joseph L. Mankiewicz
2Leo McCarey
2Lewis Milestone
2Steven Spielberg
2George Stevens
2Oliver Stone
2Billy Wilder
2Robert Wise
2Fred Zinnemann

The following directors have received four or more Best Director nominations :
NominationsDirector
12William Wyler
9Martin Scorsese
8Billy Wilder
7Woody Allen
7David Lean
7Steven Spielberg
7Fred Zinnemann
6Clarence Brown*
6Frank Capra
5Robert Altman*
5George Cukor
5Michael Curtiz
5John Ford
5Alfred Hitchcock*
5John Huston
5Elia Kazan
5Frank Lloyd
5George Stevens
5King Vidor*
4Francis Ford Coppola
4Clint Eastwood
4Federico Fellini*
4Stanley Kubrick*
4Sidney Lumet*
4Joseph L. Mankiewicz
4Mike Nichols
4Peter Weir*

Age superlatives

Diversity of nominees/winners

Asian nominees/winners

Five Asian directors have been nominated a total of seven times in this category, and two individuals have won the award.
Six black directors have been nominated a total of six times in this category, and none have won the award.
Five Latin American directors have been nominated a total of eight times in this category, and three have won the award five times.
Seven Oceanic directors have been nominated a total of eleven times in this category, and one has won the award.
Five female directors have been nominated in the category, and one has won the award.
Twenty-six directors of non-English language films have been nominated a total of thirty-one times in this category, and three have won the award.
bold — Indicates winner

§ — Directorial debut

† — Film nominated for Best Picture

‡ — Film won for Best Picture