My Favorites Directors part 2

1. Matt Reeves

Matthew George "Matt" Reeves was born April 27, 1966 in Rockville Center, New York, USA and is a writer, director and producer. Reeves began making movies at age eight, directing friends and using a wind-up camera. He befriended filmmaker J.J. Abrams when both were 13 years old and a public-access ...

2. Danny Boyle

Director | 127 Hours

Daniel Francis Boyle is a British filmmaker, producer and writer from Radcliffe, Greater Manchester. He is known for directing 28 Days Later, 127 Hours, Trainspotting, T2 Trainspotting, Slumdog Millionaire, Millions, Shallow Grave, The Beach, Yesterday, and Steve Jobs. He won many awards for ...

3. Edward Zwick

Producer | The Last Samurai

Zwick moves deftly between the roles of writer, director and producer. He was nominated for a Golden Globe for his direction of the 1989 critically acclaimed Civil War drama, Glory. He received his second Golden Globe nomination as a director for Legends of the Fall. Zwick received an Academy Award...

4. Ridley Scott

Producer | The Martian

Described by film producer Michael Deeley as "the very best eye in the business", director Ridley Scott was born on November 30, 1937 in South Shields, Tyne and Wear. His father was an officer in the Royal Engineers and the family followed him as his career posted him throughout the United Kingdom ...

5. Peter Hyams

Director | 2010

Peter Hyams was born in New York on July 26, 1943, and attended Hunter College Elementary School. He studied art and music at the Art Students League and the High School of Music and Art as well as at Syracuse University, where he majored in music and art. Before he became a CBS News news anchor in...

6. Peter Weir

Director | Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World

Peter Weir was born on August 21, 1944 in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. He is a director and writer, known for Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003), The Way Back (2010) and Witness (1985). He has been married to Wendy Stites since 1966. They have two children.

7. Joe Johnston

Director | Captain America: The First Avenger

Joseph Eggleston Johnston II is an American film director from Texas who is known for directing the cult classic film The Rocketeer, Jumanji, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, The Wolfman, October Sky, The Pagemaster, Jurassic Park III and Captain America: The First Avenger. He was an art director for ...

8. Brian De Palma

Director | Body Double

Brian De Palma is one of the well-known directors who spear-headed the new movement in Hollywood during the 1970s. He is known for his many films that go from violent pictures, to Hitchcock-like thrillers. Born on September 11, 1940, De Palma was born in Newark, New Jersey in an Italian-American ...

9. Francis Lawrence

Director | The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

Francis Lawrence is an American filmmaker. He started directing over sixty music videos before he directed the cult classic Keanu Reeves film Constantine, I Am Legend and Water for Elephants. He also directed The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Parts 1 and 2, and Red ...

10. Marc Forster

Producer | World War Z

Marc Forster is a German-born filmmaker and screenwriter. He is best known for directing the films Monster's Ball (2001), Finding Neverland (2004), Stay (2005), Stranger than Fiction (2006), The Kite Runner (2007), Quantum of Solace (2008), and World War Z (2013).

His breakthrough film was Monster's...

11. David O. Russell

Director | American Hustle

David Owen Russell is an American film writer, director, and producer, known for a cinema of intense, tragi-comedic characters whose love of life can surpass dark circumstances faced in very specific worlds. His films address such themes as mental illness as stigma or hope; invention of self and ...

12. Robert Schwentke

Writer | Der Hauptmann

Robert Schwentke was born in 1968 in Stuttgart, Germany. He is a writer and director, known for The Captain (2017), RED (2010) and Eierdiebe (2003).

13. Paul Greengrass

Director | United 93

Paul Greengrass started his filmmaking career with a super 8 camera he found in his art room in secondary school. Those short movies were animation horror films he made using old dolls, artist dummies, and the general art room clutter.

After studying in Cambridge University he got into Granada ...

14. Guillermo del Toro

Writer | El laberinto del fauno

Guillermo del Toro was born October 9, 1964 in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico. Raised by his Catholic grandmother, del Toro developed an interest in filmmaking in his early teens. Later, he learned about makeup and effects from the legendary Dick Smith (The Exorcist (1973)) and worked on making his ...

15. James McTeigue

Director | V for Vendetta

James McTeigue is known for V for Vendetta (2005), The Raven (2012) and Survivor (2015).

16. Jeannot Szwarc

Director | Somewhere in Time

Jeannot Szwarc was born on November 21, 1939 in Paris, France. He is a director and producer, known for Somewhere in Time (1980), Jaws 2 (1978) and Supergirl (1984).

17. Gore Verbinski

Director | Rango

Gore Verbinski, one of American cinema's most inventive directors who was a punk-rock guitarist as a teenager and had to sell his guitar to buy his first camera, is now the director of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006) which made the industry record for highest opening weekend of ...

18. Renny Harlin

Producer | Driven

Born in 15 March 1959 as Renny Lauri Mauritz Harjola, he is the most successful Finnish film director in the history of Hollywood.

Harlin started his career in film business in the beginning of 1980s when he was directing commercials and company films for companies like Shell. Later he worked as a ...

19. David R. Ellis

Assistant_director | The Matrix Reloaded

Began as an actor in Kurt Russell-Disney Films in 1974. Made the switch to the Stunt world following a successful career as a junior pro surfer. Born, bred, and resided in Malibu. Many, many stunts later, David made the promotion to Stunt Coordinator in 1978 on Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)....

20. Elia Kazan

Director | On the Waterfront

Known for his creative stage direction, Elia Kazan was born Elias Kazantzoglou on September 7, 1909 in Constantinople, Ottoman Empire (now Istanbul, Turkey). Noted for drawing out the best dramatic performances from his actors, he directed 21 actors to Oscar nominations, resulting in nine wins. He ...

21. Albert Hughes

Director | The Book of Eli

Albert and Allen Hughes began making movies at age 12, but their formal film education began their freshman year of high school when Allen took a TV production class. They soon made a short film entitled How To Be A Burglar and people began to take notice. Their next work, Uncensored videos, was ...

22. Allen Hughes

Director | The Book of Eli

Albert and Allen Hughes began making movies at age 12, but their formal film education began their freshman year of high school when Allen took a TV production class. They soon made a short film entitled How To Be A Burglar and people began to take notice. Their next work, Uncensored videos, was ...

23. Will Gluck

Producer | Anyone But You

Will Gluck is the Golden Globe-nominated writer/director/producer known for Easy A (2010), Friends with Benefits (2011), Annie (2014), the Peter Rabbit (2018) movies, and a number of TV shows including Woke (2020), Chicago Party Aunt (2021), and The Michael J. Fox Show (2013). He runs the ...

24. John Singleton

Writer | Boyz n the Hood

Son of Danny Singleton, a mortgage broker, and Sheila Ward, a pharmaceutical company sales executive, and raised in separate households by his unmarried parents, John Singleton attended the Film Writing Program at USC, after graduating from high school in 1986. While studying there, he won three ...

25. Joe Wright

Director | Pride & Prejudice

Joe Wright is an English film director. He is best known for Pride & Prejudice (2005), Atonement (2007), Anna Karenina (2012), and Darkest Hour (2017).

Wright always had an interest in the arts, especially painting. He would also make films on his Super 8 camera as well as spend time in the evenings...

26. 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 ...

27. Sylvain White

Director | Stomp the Yard

Filmmaker Sylvain White was born and raised in Paris, France. After attending La Sorbonne University, he earned a scholarship at Pomona College in Los Angeles. Upon graduating with honors in both film production and media studies, a series of award-winning short films led him to direct a spectrum ...

28. Sam Raimi

Director | Spider-Man

Highly inventive U.S. film director/producer/writer/actor Sam Raimi first came to the attention of film fans with the savage, yet darkly humorous, low-budget horror film, The Evil Dead (1981). From his childhood, Raimi was a fan of the cinema and, before he was ten-years-old, he was out making ...

29. Adam McKay

Producer | The Other Guys

Adam McKay (born April 17, 1968) is an American screenwriter, director, comedian, and actor. McKay has a comedy partnership with Will Ferrell, with whom he co-wrote the films Anchorman, Talladega Nights, and The Other Guys. Ferrell and McKay also founded their comedy website Funny or Die through ...

30. Joel Schumacher

Director | The Phantom of the Opera

Joel Schumacher was an American film director, film producer, screenwriter and fashion designer from New York City. He rose to fame in the 1980s for directing the coming-of-age drama "St. Elmo's Fire" (1985), and the vampire-themed horror film "The Lost Boys" (1987). In the 1990s, he worked on two ...

31. Sam Mendes

Producer | 1917

Samuel Alexander Mendes was born on August 1, 1965 in Reading, England, UK to parents James Peter Mendes, a retired university lecturer, and Valerie Helene Mendes, an author who writes children's books. Their marriage didn't last long, James divorced Sam's mother in 1970 when Sam was just 5-...

32. Roman Polanski

Director | Chinatown

Roman Polanski is a Polish film director, producer, writer and actor. Having made films in Poland, Britain, France and the USA, he is considered one of the few truly international filmmakers. Roman Polanski was born in Paris in 1933.

His parents returned to Poland from France in 1936, three years ...

33. Cary Joji Fukunaga

Producer | Beasts of No Nation

Cary Joji Fukunaga is a Japanese-American film director, screenwriter, cinematographer and producer from Oakland, California who is known for directing the James Bond film No Time to Die, Kofi, Beasts of No Nation, Jane Eyre and Sin Nombre. He co-wrote the 2017 film adaptation of the Stephen King ...

34. Tom Hooper

Director | Cats

Tom Hooper was educated at one of England's most prestigious schools, Westminster. His first film, Runaway Dog, was made when he was 13 years old and shot on a Clockwork 16mm Bolex camera, using 100 feet of film. At age 18, he wrote, directed and produced the short film Painted Faces (1992), which ...

35. Brett Ratner

Director | Red Dragon

Brett Ratner is one of Hollywood's most successful filmmakers. His diverse films resonate with audiences worldwide and, as director, his films have grossed over $2 billion at the global box office. Brett began his career directing music videos before making his feature directorial debut at 26 years...

36. Wolfgang Petersen

Director | Das Boot

A controversial film maker, Wolfgang Petersen has at once been lauded for his professionalism and attention to detail and decried for turning out a string of standard commercial Hollywood blockbusters. The son of a naval officer, Petersen held a lifelong fascination with the sea and naval subjects....

37. Robert Zemeckis

Writer | Back to the Future

A whiz-kid with special effects, Robert is from the Spielberg camp of film-making (Steven Spielberg produced many of his films). Usually working with writing partner Bob Gale, Robert's earlier films show he has a talent for zany comedy (Romancing the Stone (1984), 1941 (1979)) and special effect ...

38. Kasi Lemmons

Director | Harriet

Kasi Lemmons was born on February 24, 1961 in St. Louis, Missouri, USA. She is an actress and director, known for Harriet (2019), The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and Candyman (1992). She has been married to Vondie Curtis-Hall since August 19, 1995. They have two children.

39. Sofia Coppola

Actress | The Godfather Part III

Sofia Coppola was born on May 14, 1971 in New York City, New York, USA as Sofia Carmina Coppola. She is a director, known for Somewhere (2010), Lost in Translation (2003), and Marie Antoinette (2006). She has been married to Thomas Mars since August 27, 2011. They have two daughters, Romy and ...

40. Jane Campion

Writer | Bright Star

Jane Campion was born in Wellington, New Zealand, and now lives in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Having graduated with a BA in Anthropology from Victoria University of Wellington in 1975, and a BA, with a painting major, at Sydney College of the Arts in 1979, she began filmmaking in the early...

41. Jonathan Demme

Director | The Silence of the Lambs

Jonathan Demme was born on February 22, 1944 in Baldwin, Long Island, New York, USA. He was a director and producer, known for The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Rachel Getting Married (2008) and Philadelphia (1993). He was married to Joanne Howard and Evelyn Purcell. He died on April 26, 2017 in ...

42. Hayao Miyazaki

Writer | Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi

Hayao Miyazaki is one of Japan's greatest animation directors. The entertaining plots, compelling characters, and breathtaking visuals in his films have earned him international renown from critics as well as public recognition within Japan.

Miyazaki started his career in 1963 as an animator at the ...