Golden Globe Award for Best Director facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Golden Globe for Best Director – Motion Picture
The 2024 recipient: Brady Corbet
Presented by	Hollywood Foreign Press Association
Location	United States
Currently held by	Brady Corbet for The Brutalist (2024)

The Golden Globe Award for Best Director – Motion Picture is a Golden Globe Award that has been presented annually by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, an organization composed of journalists who cover the United States film industry for publications based outside North America, since 1943.

Having won all four of his nominations, Elia Kazan has been honored most often in this category. Clint Eastwood, Miloš Forman, David Lean, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and Oliver Stone tie for second place with three wins each. Steven Spielberg has had the most nominations (fourteen). Barbra Streisand, Chloé Zhao and Jane Campion are the only women to have won the award.

Receiving the award in 1984 for Yentl, Barbra Streisand became the first woman to win the Golden Globe for Best Director.

She remained the only woman to win a Golden Globe for directing for 37 years until Chloé Zhao won the award for Nomadland in 2021 and became the second woman and the first Asian woman to do so.

In the following lists, the first names, listed in bold type against a blue background, are the winners, and the following names are the remaining nominees. The years given are those in which the films under consideration were released, not the year of the ceremony, which takes place in January of the following year.

Winners and nominees

Henry King was the first recipient of this award for The Song of Bernadette (1943)

Billy Wilder won twice for The Lost Weekend (1945) and Sunset Boulevard (1950)

Elia Kazan won four times for Gentleman's Agreement (1947), On the Waterfront (1954), Baby Doll (1956), and America America (1963)

John Huston won twice for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) and Prizzi's Honor (1985)

Cecil B. DeMille won for The Greatest Show on Earth (1952)

Vincent Minnelli won for Gigi (1958)

David Lean won thrice The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), and Doctor Zhivago (1965)

William Wyler won for Ben-Hur (1959)

Stanley Kramer won for Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)

George Cukor won for My Fair Lady (1964)

Mike Nichols won for The Graduate (1967)

Paul Newman won for Rachel, Rachel (1968)

William Friedkin won twice for The French Connection (1971) and The Exorcist (1973)

Francis Ford Coppola won twice for The Godfather (1972) and Apocalypse Now (1979)

Roman Polanski won for Chinatown (1974)

Milos Forman won thrice for One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), Amadeus (1984), and The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996)

Sidney Lumet won for Network (1976)

Robert Redford won for Ordinary People (1980)

Warren Beatty won for Reds (1981)

Richard Attenborough won for Gandhi (1982)

Barbra Streisand won for Yentl (1983)

Oliver Stone won thrice for Platoon (1986), Born on the Fourth of July (1989), and JFK (1991)

Bernardo Bertolucci won for The Last Emperor (1987)

Clint Eastwood won thrice for Bird (1988), Unforgiven (1992), and Million Dollar Baby (2004)

Kevin Costner won for Dances with Wolves (1990)

Steven Spielberg won thrice for Schindler's List (1993), Saving Private Ryan (1998), and The Fabelmans (2022)

Robert Zemeckis won for Forrest Gump (1994)

Mel Gibson won for Braveheart (1995)

James Cameron won twice for Titanic (1997) and Avatar (2009)

Sam Mendes won twice American Beauty (1999) and 1917 (2019)

Ang Lee won twice Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) and Brokeback Mountain (2005)

Robert Altman won for Gosford Park (2002)

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

Martin Scorsese won thrice for Gangs of New York (2002), The Departed (2006), and Hugo (2011)

Danny Boyle won for Slumdog Millionaire (2008)

David Fincher won for The Social Network (2010)

Ben Affleck won for Argo (2012)

Damien Chazelle won for La La Land (2016)

Alejandro González Iñárritu won for The Revenant (2015)

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

Alfonso Cuarón won twice for Gravity (2013) and Roma (2018)

Chloé Zhao won for Nomadland (2020)

Jane Campion won for The Power of the Dog (2021)

1940s

1950s

1960s

1970s

1980s

1990s

2000s

2010s

2020s

Multiple nominations

More than 5 nominations

• Steven Spielberg (14/3)
• Martin Scorsese (10/3)
• Clint Eastwood (7/3)
• Fred Zinnemann (7/2)
• Francis Ford Coppola (6/2)
• Sidney Lumet (6/1)

5 nominations

4 nominations

3 nominations

2 nominations

Multiple winners

4 awards

• Elia Kazan

3 awards

2 awards

See also

In Spanish: Anexo:Globo de Oro al mejor director para niños

• BAFTA Award for Best Direction
• Academy Award for Best Director
• Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Director
• Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing – Feature Film
• Independent Spirit Award for Best Director