Academy Award for Best Director facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Academy Award for Best Director
The 2025 recipient: Sean Baker
Presented by	Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS)
Country	United States
First awarded	1929
Currently held by	Sean Baker, Anora (2025)

The Academy Award for Best Director (officially known as the Academy Award of Merit for Directing) is an award presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). 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 90 films that won Best Picture and were also nominated for Best Director, 69 won the award. The award has been criticised in recent years for failing to recognise female directors. Of the 257 individual directors nominated in the history of the award, only 9 have been women; and only 3 of the 76 winners have been women.

Since its inception, the award has been given to 74 different directors or directing teams. As of the 97th Academy Awards ceremony, American filmmaker Sean Baker is the most recent winner in this category for his work on Anora.

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.

Frank Borzage won twice: "Dramatic director" at the first ceremony, for 7th Heaven (1927); & later, Bad Girl (1931).

Lewis Milestone won twice: "Comedy director" at the first ceremony, for Two Arabian Knights (1927); & later, All Quiet on the Western Front (1930).

Frank Lloyd won twice, for The Divine Lady (1929) & Cavalcade (1933).

Frank Capra won thrice, for It Happened One Night (1934), Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), & You Can't Take It with You (1938).

John Ford won a record four times, for: The Informer (1935), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), How Green Was My Valley (1941), & The Quiet Man (1952).

Leo McCarey won twice, for The Awful Truth (1937) & Going My Way (1944).

Victor Fleming won for Gone with the Wind (1939).

William Wyler, with a record twelve nominations, won thrice, for: Mrs. Miniver (1942), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), & Ben-Hur (1959).

Michael Curtiz won for Casablanca (1942).

Billy Wilder (right, with Gloria Swanson) won twice, for The Lost Weekend (1945) & The Apartment (1960).

Elia Kazan won twice, for Gentleman's Agreement (1947) & On the Waterfront (1954).

John Huston won for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948).

Joseph L. Mankiewicz won twice consecutively, for A Letter to Three Wives (1949) & All About Eve (1950).

George Stevens won twice, for A Place in the Sun (1951) & Giant (1956).

Fred Zinnemann won twice, for From Here to Eternity (1953) & A Man for All Seasons (1966).

David Lean won twice, for The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) & Lawrence of Arabia (1962).

Vincente Minnelli won for Gigi (1958).

Robert Wise won twice: jointly with Jerome Robbins (an Oscars first) for West Side Story (1961) & solo for The Sound of Music (1965).

George Cukor won for My Fair Lady (1964).

Mike Nichols won for The Graduate (1967).

Carol Reed won for Oliver! (1968).

Franklin J. Schaffner won for Patton (1970).

William Friedkin won for The French Connection (1971).

Bob Fosse won for Cabaret (1972).

Francis Ford Coppola won for The Godfather Part II (1974).

Miloš Forman won twice, for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) & Amadeus (1984).

Woody Allen won for Annie Hall (1977).

Robert Redford won for Ordinary People (1980).

Warren Beatty won for Reds (1981).

Richard Attenborough won for Gandhi (1982).

James L. Brooks won for Terms of Endearment (1983).

Sydney Pollack won for Out of Africa (1985).

Oliver Stone won twice, for Platoon (1986) & Born on the Fourth of July (1989).

Bernardo Bertolucci won for The Last Emperor (1987).

Barry Levinson won for Rain Man (1988).

Kevin Costner won for Dances with Wolves (1990).

Jonathan Demme won for The Silence of the Lambs (1991).

Clint Eastwood won twice, for Unforgiven (1992) & Million Dollar Baby (2004)—latter, at 74, rendered him the oldest winner.

Steven Spielberg won twice, for Schindler's List (1993) & Saving Private Ryan (1998).

Robert Zemeckis won for Forrest Gump (1994).

Mel Gibson won for Braveheart (1995).

James Cameron won for Titanic (1997).

Sam Mendes won for American Beauty (1999).

Steven Soderbergh won for Traffic (2000).

Ron Howard won for A Beautiful Mind (2001).

Roman Polanski won for The Pianist (2002).

Peter Jackson won for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003).

Ang Lee won twice, for Brokeback Mountain (2005) & Life of Pi (2012); first Asian winner.

Martin Scorsese won for The Departed (2006).

The Coen brothers won for No Country for Old Men (2007).

Danny Boyle won for Slumdog Millionaire (2008).

Kathryn Bigelow won for The Hurt Locker (2009); first woman to win.

Tom Hooper won for The King's Speech (2010).

Michel Hazanavicius won for The Artist (2011).

Alfonso Cuarón won twice, for Gravity (2013) & Roma (2018); first Mexican winner.

Alejandro G. Iñárritu won twice consecutively, for Birdman (2014) & The Revenant (2015).

Damien Chazelle won for La La Land (2016); youngest winner, at age 32.

Guillermo del Toro won for The Shape of Water (2017).

Bong Joon-ho won for Parasite (2019); first to direct a foreign-language (Korean) winner for Best Picture.

Chloé Zhao won for Nomadland (2020); first woman of color to win.

Jane Campion won for The Power of the Dog (2021); first woman to be nominated twice.

The Daniels won for Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022).

Christopher Nolan won for Oppenheimer (2023).

1920s

1930s

1940s

1950s

1960s

1970s

1980s

1990s

2000s

2010s

2020s

Multiple wins and nominations

Age superlatives

Records

• John Ford has received the most awards in this category, with four. Frank Capra and William Wyler won three each.
  • Wyler has the most nominations, with 12—including a record four years in a row. Martin Scorsese is currently second, with 10 nominations.
  • Clarence Brown received the most nominations without a win (6). Alfred Hitchcock and King Vidor each received 5 nominations without a win.
• Four directors have won twice for films that did not win Best Picture: Frank Borzage, George Stevens, Ang Lee, and Alfonso Cuarón.
  • Of John Ford's four wins, the only film which also won Best Picture was How Green Was My Valley (1941).
  • Ford (1940–1941), Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1949–1950), and Alejandro González Iñárritu (2014–2015) are the only directors to have won the award in two consecutive years.
  • Francis Ford Coppola is the only director to be nominated for each film of a trilogy, The Godfather trilogy, winning for the second film.
• Four directing teams have been nominated together (a total of five times, winning on three occasions): Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins for West Side Story (1961, winners); Warren Beatty and Buck Henry for Heaven Can Wait (1978); Joel and Ethan Coen for No Country for Old Men (2007, winners) and True Grit (2010); and Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert for Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022, winners).
  • The Coen Brothers are the only siblings to have won the award.
• Six directors won the award for their feature film debut: Delbert Mann for Marty (1955), Jerome Robbins for West Side Story (1961), Robert Redford for Ordinary People (1980), James L. Brooks for Terms of Endearment (1983), Kevin Costner for Dances With Wolves (1990), and Sam Mendes for American Beauty (1999).
  • Robbins is the only director to have won for his only career directing credit.
• Lina Wertmüller was the first woman nominated in the category, for Seven Beauties (1976).
  • Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win the award, for The Hurt Locker (2009).
  • Chloé Zhao was the first woman of color to win the award, for Nomadland (2020).
  • Jane Campion is the first woman to be nominated twice for the award: The Piano (1993) and The Power of the Dog (2021)—winning for the latter.
• John Singleton is the first Black (and youngest) nominee for Boyz n the Hood (1991).
  • Steve McQueen is the first Black nominee to direct a Best Picture winner, for 12 Years a Slave. Barry Jenkins subsequently did the same three years later, with Moonlight (2016).
• David Lean was the first non-American to win—and twice, for The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) and Lawrence of Arabia (1962). This did not recur for five decades with any other non-American directors, until Ang Lee, Alfonso Cuarón, and Alejandro González Iñárritu each won twice themselves.
  • Lee was the first Asian director to win the award, for Brokeback Mountain (2005). He won again for Life of Pi (2012).
  • Cuarón was the first Mexican (and Latin American) director to win the award, for Gravity. He won again for Roma (2018).

Related pages

• Golden Globe Award for Best Director
• BAFTA Award for Best Direction

See also

In Spanish: Anexo:Óscar al mejor director para niños

• Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing – Feature Film