Top 10 Greatest Directors of All Time
by mitchie-hockey | created - 15 Jun 2014 | updated - 14 Dec 2016 | PublicLegendary Filmmakers, each and every one of them.
1. Steven Spielberg
Producer | Schindler's List
One of the most influential personalities in the history of cinema, Steven Spielberg is Hollywood's best known director and one of the wealthiest filmmakers in the world. He has an extraordinary number of commercially successful and critically acclaimed credits to his name, either as a director, ...
Best Films:
-Jaws
-Raiders of the Lost Ark
-Schindlers List
-Saving Private Ryan
-Jurassic Park
-Close encounters of a Third Kind
2. Martin Scorsese
Producer | Killers of the Flower Moon
Martin Charles Scorsese was born on November 17, 1942 in Queens, New York City, to Catherine Scorsese (née Cappa) and Charles Scorsese, who both worked in Manhattan's garment district, and whose families both came from Palermo, Sicily. He was raised in the neighborhood of Little Italy, which later ...
Best Films:
-Goodfellas
-Taxi Driver
-Casino
-Raging Bull
-The Wolf of Wall Street
-The Departed
3. Alfred Hitchcock
Director | Psycho
Alfred Joseph Hitchcock was born in Leytonstone, Essex, England. He was the son of Emma Jane (Whelan; 1863 - 1942) and East End greengrocer William Hitchcock (1862 - 1914). His parents were both of half English and half Irish ancestry. He had two older siblings, William Hitchcock (born 1890) and ...
Best Films:
-Psycho
-Rear Window
-North By Northwest
-Vertigo
-The Birds
-Rope
4. Stanley Kubrick
Director | 2001: A Space Odyssey
Stanley Kubrick was born in Manhattan, New York City, to Sadie Gertrude (Perveler) and Jacob Leonard Kubrick, a physician. His family were Jewish immigrants (from Austria, Romania, and Russia). Stanley was considered intelligent, despite poor grades at school. Hoping that a change of scenery would ...
Best Films:
-The Shining
-Dr. Strangelove
-A Clockwork Orange
-Full Metal Jacket
-2001 A Space Odyssey
-Eyes Wide Shut
5. Christopher Nolan
Writer | Tenet
Best known for his cerebral, often nonlinear, storytelling, acclaimed Academy Award winner writer/director/producer Sir Christopher Nolan CBE was born in London, England. Over the course of more than 25 years of filmmaking, Nolan has gone from low-budget independent films to working on some of the ...
Best Films:
-The Dark Knight
-Interstellar
-Inception
-Memento
-The Prestige
-Dunkirk
6. James Cameron
Writer | Avatar: The Way of Water
James Francis Cameron was born on August 16, 1954 in Kapuskasing, Ontario, Canada. He moved to the United States in 1971. The son of an engineer, he majored in physics at California State University before switching to English, and eventually dropping out. He then drove a truck to support his ...
Best Films:
-The Terminator
-Terminator 2: Judgement Day
-Aliens
-Titanic
-True Lies
-The Abyss
7. Francis Ford Coppola
Producer | Apocalypse Now
Francis Ford Coppola was born in 1939 in Detroit, Michigan, but grew up in a New York suburb in a creative, supportive Italian-American family. His father, Carmine Coppola, was a composer and musician. His mother, Italia Coppola (née Pennino), had been an actress. Francis Ford Coppola graduated ...
Best Films:
-The Godfather
-The Godfather 2
-The Godfather 3
-Apocalypse Now
-The Conversation
-The Rainmaker
8. Woody Allen
Writer | Annie Hall
Woody Allen was born on November 30, 1935, as Allen Konigsberg, in The Bronx, NY, the son of Martin Konigsberg and Nettie Konigsberg. He has one younger sister, Letty Aronson. As a young boy, he became intrigued with magic tricks and playing the clarinet, two hobbies that he continues today.
Allen ...
Best Films:
-Annie Hall
-Manhattan
-Midnight In Paris
-Match Point
-Blue Jasmine
-The Purple Rose of Cairo
9. Billy Wilder
Writer | The Apartment
Originally planning to become a lawyer, Billy Wilder abandoned that career in favor of working as a reporter for a Viennese newspaper, using this experience to move to Berlin, where he worked for the city's largest tabloid. He broke into films as a screenwriter in 1929 and wrote scripts for many ...
Best Films:
-Sunset Blvd
-The Apartment
-Some Like It Hot
-Double Indemnity
-Witness for the Prosecution
-The Lost Weekend
10. Quentin Tarantino
Writer | Reservoir Dogs
Quentin Jerome Tarantino was born in Knoxville, Tennessee. His father, Tony Tarantino, is an Italian-American actor and musician from New York, and his mother, Connie (McHugh), is a nurse from Tennessee. Quentin moved with his mother to Torrance, California, when he was four years old.
In January of...
Best Films:
-Pulp Fiction
-Reservoir Dogs
-Inglorious Basterds
-Django Unchained
-Kill Bill
-Jackie Brown
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