Research in Progress (January 29, 2023)
Directors: Winners & Nominees:
72 winners (excluding 2023)
141+5= 146 (includes 2023, 2 Daniels, Field, McDonaugh, Oustland, Spielberg)
Total: 72+146= 218
Occupational Inheritance
Nationality
Social Class
Race/Religion
Formal Education
Training
Clooney
Daldry, Stephen
Daldry joined a youth theatre group in Taunton, Somerset, and performed as Sandy Tyrell in Hay Fever for the local amateur society, Taunton Thespians.
At age 18, he won a Royal Air Force scholarship to read English at the University of Sheffield, where he became chair of the Sheffield University Theatre Group.
After graduation, he spent a year travelling through Italy, where he became a clown’s apprentice. He then trained as actor on the postgraduate course at East 15 Acting School from 1982 to 1983, now part of the University of Essex.
Daldry began his career as an apprentice at the Sheffield Crucible from 1985 to 1988, working under artistic director Clare Venables. He also headed productions at the Manchester Library Theatre, Liverpool Playhouse, Stratford East, Oxford Stage, Brighton and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. He was Artistic Director of the Royal Court Theatre from 1992–98, where he headed the £26 million development scheme. He was also Artistic Director of London’s Gate Theatre (1989–92) and the Metro Theatre Company (1984–86). He is currently on the Board of the Young and Old Vic Theatres and remains an Associate Director of the Royal Court Theatre. He was the Cameron Mackintosh Visiting Professor of Contemporary Theatre for 2002 at St Catherine’s College, Oxford.
A
Abrahamson, Lenny:
Allen, Woody
Almodovar, Pedro (Spanish, for Spanish film)
Altman, Robert:
Altman was born on February 20, 1925, in Kansas City, Missouri, the son of Helen (née Matthews), a Mayflower descendant from Nebraska, and Bernard Clement Altman, a wealthy insurance salesman and amateur gambler, who came from an upper-class family. Altman’s ancestry was German, English and Irish; his paternal grandfather, Frank Altman, Sr., anglicized the spelling of the family name from “Altmann” to “Altman”. Altman had a Catholic upbringing, but he did not continue to follow or practice the religion as an adult, although he has been referred to as “a sort of Catholic” and a Catholic director.
He was educated at Jesuit schools, including Rockhurst High School, in Kansas City. He graduated from Wentworth Military Academy in Lexington, Missouri in 1943.
Altman joined the US Army Air Forces at the age of 18. During World War II, Altman flew more than 50 bombing missions as co-pilot of a B-24 Liberator with the 307th Bomb Group in Borneo and the Dutch East Indies.
Upon discharge in 1947, Altman moved to California. He worked in publicity for a company that invented a tattooing machine to identify dogs. He entered filmmaking on a whim, selling a script to RKO for the 1948 picture Bodyguard, which he co-wrote with George W. George.
Altman’s success encouraged him to move to New York, where he attempted to forge a career as writer. Having enjoyed little success, he returned to Kansas City in 1949, where he accepted a job as director and writer of industrial films for Calvin Company. Altman directed some 65 industrial films and docs for the Calvin Company. Through his early work, Altman experimented with narrative technique and developed his characteristic use of overlapping dialogue. In February 2012, an early Calvin film by Altman, Modern Football (1951), was found by filmmaker Gary Huggins.
Anderson, Michael
Anderson, Paul Thomas
Anderson, Wes
Antonioni, Michelangelo (Italian for English-speaking film)
Aronofsky, Darren
Ashby, Hal
Attenborough, Richard
Avildsen, John G.
Robert Benton
was born in Waxahachie, Texas, the son of Dorothy (née Spaulding) and Ellery Douglass Benton, a telephone company employee. He attended the University of Texas and Columbia University.
In 1959, he co-wrote the book The IN and OUT Book with Harvey Schmidt (Viking Press). He was the art director at Esquire in the early 1960s.
Benigni
Roberto Benigni was born on October 27, 1952 in Manciano La Misericordia (a frazione of Castiglion Fiorentino), the son of Isolina Papini, fabric maker, and Luigi Benigni, bricklayer, carpenter, and farmer.
He has three sisters: Bruna (born 1945), Albertina (born 1947) and Anna (born 1948). He was raised Catholic and served as altar boy; later in his life he became atheist, but then he got again interested in religious topics, returning to practicing Catholicism.
His first experiences as a theatre actor took place in 1971, in Prato. He moved to Rome where he took part in experimental theatre shows, some of which he also directed. In 1975, Benigni had first theatrical success with “Cioni Mario di Gaspare fu Giulia,” written by Giuseppe Bertolucci.
Beresford
Beresford was born in Paddington, New South Wales, the son of Lona (née Warr) and Leslie Beresford, who sold electrical goods.
He grew up in the outer-western suburb of Toongabbie, and went to The King’s School, Parramatta. He made several short films in his teens including The Hunter (1959).
He completed a Bachelor of Arts majoring in English at the University of Sydney, where he graduated in 1964. While there, he made the short film The Devil to Pay (1962) starring John Bell and Ron Blair, It Droppeth as the Gentle Rain (1963) co-directed by Albie Thoms and starring Germaine Greer, Clement Meadmore (1963) with Bell and King-size Woman (1965).
Beresford moved to England for film work. He could not break into the British film scene, so he answered an ad for editing job in Nigeria, where he worked for two years, in Enugu.
He returned to England and worked for the British Film Institute as producer of short films by first-time directors, including Magritte: The False Mirror (1970) and Paradigm (1970).
Beresford directed the docu Lichtenstein in London (1968) about Roy Lichtenstein, and Extravaganza (1968), Barbara Hepworth at the Tate (1970), The Cinema of Raymond Fark (1970), and Arts of Village India (1972). Beresford returned to Australia to make his first feature, The Adventures of Barry McKenzie (1972)
Peter Bogdanovich
Born in Kingston, New York, the son of Herma (née Robinson) and Borislav Bogdanovich, a pianist and painter. His mother was of Austrian Jewish descent and his father was a Serb. Fluent in Serbian, having learned it before English. He had older brother who died in accident in 1938, at 18 months, after pot of boiling soup fell on him, though Bogdanovich did not learn about his brother until he was 7 and did not know the circumstances of his death until he was an adult.
His parents both arrived in the U.S. in May 1939 on visitors’ visas, along with his mother’s immediate family, 3 months before the onset of World War II.
In 1952, when he was 12, Bogdanovich began keeping a record of every film he saw on index cards, with reviews; he continued to do so until 1970. He saw up to 400 films a year. He graduated from New York City’s Collegiate School in 1957 and studied acting at the Stella Adler Conservatory.
In the early 1960s, Bogdanovich was film programmer at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, where he programmed influential retrospectives and wrote monographs on Orson Welles, John Ford, Howard Hawks, and Hitchcocock. Bogdanovich also brought attention to Allan Dwan, a pioneer of American film who had fallen into obscurity in 1971 retrospective Dwan attended. He also programmed for New Yorker Theater.
Before becoming a director, he wrote for Esquire, Saturday Evening Post, and Cahiers du Cinéma as a film critic. These articles were collected in Pieces of Time (1973).
In 1966, following the example of Cahiers du Cinéma critics François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, and Éric Rohmer, who had created the Nouvelle Vague (“New Wave”) by making their own films, Bogdanovich decided to become a director. Encouraged by director Frank Tashlin, Bogdanovich headed for Los Angeles with his wife Polly Platt and left his rent unpaid.
Occupational Inheritance:
Yes
Anderson, Michael:
Parents actors; great aunt, actress; his sons would become actor and producer, respectively
Anderson, Paul Thomas:
Father actor
Bogdanovich: father, pianist and painter.
Cattaneo, Peter; father, animator
No
Abrahamson, Lenny;
Allen, Woody (sister later became producer)
Almodovar (brother later became producer)
Altman, Robert
Anderson, Wes
Antonioni
Aronofsky
Ashby, Hal
Born in Ogden, Utah, Ashby grew up in a Mormon household, the son of Eileen Ireta (Hetzler) and James Thomas Ashby, a dairy owner. His tumultuous childhood as part of a dysfunctional family included the divorce of his parents, his father’s suicide, and dropping out of high school.
Ashby press falsely stated that he graduated from Utah State University (in Logan, Utah) to ensure he fit into the social milieu of college-educated peers like Coppola and Scorsese.
Ashby was married and divorced by the time he was 19.
Attenborough
Avildsen, John
B
Babenco, Hector
Beatty, Warren; parents teachers, sister actress Shirley MacLaine.
Beaumont
Benton, Robert
Father, telephone employee (middle class)
Benigni: No
mother fabric maker, father, bricklayer, carpenter, farmer
Beresford: No
father sold electrical goods
Bergman
Bertolucci
Bigelow, K (woman)
Bogdanovich
Bong, Joon-ho
Boorman, John
Borzage
Branagh
Brenon, Herbert
Brest, M
Brooks, James
Brooks, Richard
Brown, Clarence
father, cotton manufacturer
Born in Clinton, Massachusetts, to Larkin Harry Brown, a cotton manufacturer, and Katherine Ann Brown (née Gaw), Brown moved to Tennessee when he was 11 years old.
He attended Knoxville High School and the University of Tennessee, both in Knoxville, Tennessee, graduating from the university at the age of 19 with 2 degrees in engineering. An early fascination in automobiles led Brown to a job with the Stevens-Duryea Company, then to his own Brown Motor Car Company in Alabama. He later abandoned the car dealership after developing an interest in motion pictures around 1913. He was hired by the Peerless Studio at Fort Lee, New Jersey, and became assistant to the French-born director Maurice Tourneur.
After serving as a fighter pilot and flight instructor in the United States Army Air Service during World War I, Brown was given his first co-directing credit (with Tourneur) for The Great Redeemer (1920). Later that year, he directed major portion of The Last of the Mohicans after Tourneur was injured in a fall.
Brown moved to Universal in 1924, and then to MGM, where he remained until the mid-1950s.
C
Cattaneo
Cimino
Clooney
Clooney was born on May 6, 1961, in Lexington, Kentucky. His mother, Nina Bruce (née Warren), was a beauty queen and city councilwoman. His father, Nick Clooney, is a former anchorman and television host, including five years on the AMC network. Clooney is of Irish, German, and English ancestry.
Cabaret singer and actress Rosemary Clooney was an aunt. Through Rosemary, his cousins include actors Miguel Ferrer, Rafael Ferrer, and Gabriel Ferrer, who is married to singer Debby Boone.
Cimino was born in New York City on February 3, 1939. A third-generation Italian-American, Cimino and his brothers grew up with their parents in Westbury, Long Island, New York. He was regarded as prodigy at the private schools, but rebelled as adolescent by consorting with delinquents, getting into fights, coming home drunk.
Cimino described himself as “always hanging around with kids my parents didn’t approve of. When I was 15, I spent 3 weeks driving all over Brooklyn with a guy who was following his girlfriend.
His father was a music publisher, responsible for marching bands and organs playing pop music at football games.
“When my father found out I went into the movie business, he didn’t talk to me for a year,” Cimino said.
His mother was a costume designer.
Cimino graduated from Westbury High School in 1956. He entered Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan. Cimino majored in graphic arts, was member of a weightlifting club, and participated in a group to welcome incoming students.
He graduated in 1959 with honors. In Cimino’s final year at Michigan State, he became art director, and later managing editor, of the school’s humor magazine Spartan.
At Yale, Cimino studied painting and architecture and art history and became involved in school dramatics. In 1962, he enlisted in the U.S. Army Reserve. He trained for 5 months at Fort Dix, NJ and had month of medical training in Fort Sam Houston, Texas.
Cimino graduated from Yale University, receiving Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1961 and his Master of Fine Arts in 1963, both in painting.
After graduating from Yale, Cimino moved to Manhattan to work in Madison Avenue advertising and became director of television commercials. He shot ads for L’eggs hosiery, Kool cigarettes, Eastman Kodak, United Airlines, and Pepsi, among others.
Cimino directed the 1967 United Airlines commercial “Take Me Along,” a musical extravaganza in which a group of ladies sing “Take Me Along” (adapted from short-lived Broadway musical) to a group of men, presumably their husbands, to take them on a flight.
Through his commercial work, Cimino met Joann Carelli, then a commercial director representative. They began a 30-year on-again-off-again relationship.
In 1971, Cimino moved to LA to start career as screenwriter. “I’d never really written anything ever before. I still don’t regard myself as a writer. I’ve probably written 14 screenplays by 1978 and I still don’t think of myself that way. Yet, that’s how I make a living.”
“I started writing screenplays because I didn’t have the money to buy books or to option properties. You only had a chance to direct if you owned screenplay which some star wanted to do, and that’s precisely what happened with Thunderbolt and Lightfoot.”
Clooney, George
Daldry
Daldry was born in Dorset, son of singer Cherry (née Thompson) and bank manager Patrick Daldry. The family moved to Taunton, Somerset, where his father died of cancer when Daldry was aged 14.
Social Class:
Abrahamson, middle; father solicitor; grandfather physician
Allen, lower middle; father, jewelry engraver and waiter; mother bookkeeper.
Almodovar: lower-middle
Altman: Upper-middle; father wealthy insurance salesman
Anderson, Michael: Middle (Actors)
Anderson, Wes: Upper-middle
His mother realtor and archaeologist; father advertising and public relations.
Family: parents divorced when he was 8.
Anderson, Paul Thomas; father actor
Anderson was born in Studio City, Los Angeles, to Edwina and Ernie Anderson, an actor who was the voice of ABC and Cleveland TV late-night horror movie host known as “Ghoulardi” (which became Anderson’s production company).
Antonioni Upper middle; landowners
Aronofsky: Middle class, parents teachers
Ashby, Hal
Avildsen
Attenborough: Upper-middle;
Father scholar and academic administrator, fellow at Emmanuel College,
Babenco, Hector, Jewish
Beatty: Upper-middle class; both parents teachers; grandparents also teachers
Beaumont
Benton, Robert: middle class; father telephone company employee;
Benigni: lower-middle class (mother, fabric maker, father, bricklayer, carpenter, farmer)
Berenson: Middle Class
Bogdanovich: Upper middle class?
father painter; his mother was of Austrian Jewish descent and his father Serb.
Brown, Clarence: Upper-middle;
father, cotton manufacturer
Cattaneo, middle class (father animator)
He began his education at Blessed Sacrament School in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky. He attended St. Michael’s School in Worthington, Ohio; then Western Row Elementary School (public school) in Mason, Ohio, from 1968 to 1974; and St. Susanna School in Mason, where he served as altar boy. The Clooneys moved back to Kentucky when George was midway through the seventh grade.
In middle school, Clooney developed Bell’s palsy, a medical condition that partially paralyzes the face. The malady went away within a year. In an interview with Larry King, he stated that “yes, it goes away. It takes about nine months to go away. It was the first year of high school, which was a bad time for having half your face paralyzed.” He also described one positive outcome of the condition: “It’s probably a great thing that it happened to me because it forced me to engage in a series of making fun of myself. That’s an important part of being famous. The practical jokes have to be aimed at you.”
After his parents moved to Augusta, Kentucky, Clooney attended Augusta High School. He earned all As and a B in school, and played baseball and basketball. He tried out to play professional baseball with the Cincinnati Reds in 1977, but did not pass the first round of player cuts and was not offered a contract.
Clooney: Education: He attended Northern Kentucky University from 1979 to 1981, majoring in broadcast journalism, and very briefly attended the University of Cincinnati, but did not graduate from either.
He earned money selling women’s shoes, insurance door to door, stocking shelves, working in construction, and cutting tobacco.
Clooney’s first role was as an extra in the television mini-series Centennial in 1978, which was based on the novel of the same name by James A. Michener and was partly filmed in Clooney’s hometown of Augusta, Kentucky.[32][33] Clooney’s first major role came in 1984 in the short-lived CBS sitcom E/R (not to be confused with ER, the long-running medical drama). He played a handyman on the series The Facts of Life and appeared as Bobby Hopkins, a detective, on an episode of The Golden Girls. His first prominent role was a semi-regular supporting role in the sitcom Roseanne, playing Roseanne Barr’s supervisor Booker Brooks, followed by the role of a construction worker on Baby Talk, a co-starring role on the CBS drama Bodies of Evidence as Detective Ryan Walker, and then a year-long turn as Det. James Falconer on Sisters. In 1988, Clooney played one of the lead roles in the comedy-horror film Return of the Killer Tomatoes. In 1990, he starred in the short-lived ABC police drama Sunset Beat.
During this period, Clooney was a student at the Beverly Hills Playhouse acting school for five years.
Clooney rose to fame when he played Dr. Doug Ross, alongside Anthony Edwards, Julianna Margulies, and Noah Wyle, on the hit NBC medical drama ER from 1994 to 1999.
Nationality:
Abrahamson, UK–Irish
Allen, Woody, US–NYC–Brooklyn
Almodovar, Spanish
Altman, Robert, US, Kansas
Anderson, Michael, UK
Anderson, Paul Thomas: US, LA
Anderson grew up in the San Fernando Valley, the 3rd youngest of 9 children. He had troubled relationship with mother but close to father, who encouraged him to become writer or director.
Anderson, Wes, U.S.; lives in France
Antonioni: Italian (also English-speaking)
Aronofsky, US
Ashby, Hal, US, Utah
Avildsen, US; Danish descent; born Oak Park, Illinois
Attenborough, UK
Babenco, Hector, Brazil-Argentine
Barrymore, Lionel, US,
Beatty, US, Richmond, Virginia
Benton, Robert, US, Waxahachie, Texas
Benigni, Italian (not Rome)
Berenson: Aussie
Bogdanovich: Son of immigrants
His mother was of Austrian Jewish descent and his father Serb.
Brown, Clarence:
Clinton, MA; then
Cattaneo
Uk (London) of Italian descent
Clooney
Race/Religion
Abrahamson, Jewish (born); atheist
Allen, Woody, Jewish
Almodovar, Catholic
Altman, Catholic
Anderson, Michael, No Data
Anderson, Wes:
Antonioni: Italian, Catholic
Aronofsky: Jewish
Ashby, Hal: Mormon
Attenborough
Avildsen
Babenco, Jewish
Barrymore, Lionel
Beatty, NO Data
Beaumont
Benton, Robert
Benigni, Italian, Catholic
Beresford, Bruce: Aussie
Bogdanovich: mother was of Austrian Jewish descent and his father was a Serb.
Brown, Clarence
Formal Education:
Abrahamson, Lenny: High School and Trinity College Dublin, scholar in philosophy in 1988, after studying physics.
Allen, Woody: City College of NY, 1954, left during first semester.
He taught himself; he later taught at New School and studied with writing teacher Lajos Egri.
Almodovar, Pedro: When Almodóvar was 8, he was sent to study at religious boarding school, hoping to become priest. His family joined him in Cáceres, where his father opened gas station and his mother sold wine. Unlike Calzada, there was cinema in Cáceres. “Cinema became my real education, much more than the one I received from the priest,” he said later.
Almodóvar was influenced by Luis Buñuel.
Anderson, Paul Thomas:
Attended Buckley in Sherman Oaks, John Thomas Dye School, Campbell Hall School, Cushing Academy, and Montclair Prep.
Anderson was involved in filmmaking from young age, and never had alternative plan to directing.
He made his first film at 8, and started making films on a Betamax video camera that his father bought in 1982. He later started using 8mm film, but realized that video was easier.
He began writing in adolescence, experimenting with Bolex 16 millimeter camera. After years of experimenting, he wrote and filmed his first feature as senior in high school at Montclair Prep using money earned from cleaning cages at pet store.
Short: The Dirk Diggler Story (1988)–30-minute mockumentary shot on video, about a porn star, inspired by John Holmes, who would serve as major inspiration for Boogie Nights.
Anderson attended Santa Monica College, before spending two semesters as English major at Emerson College where he was taught by David Foster Wallace, and only 2 days at New York University before he began as production assistant on TV, films, music videos and game shows in LA and NY.
Allen, Woody:
Writing short jokes when he was 15, comedy writer; comedian
Almodovar:
Against parents’ wishes, he moved to Madrid.
Altman, Robert:
Jesuit schools, Rockhurst High School, Kansas City; grad of Wentworth Military Academy in Lexington, Missouri in 1943; aged 18.
Upon his discharge from military, in 1947, Altman moved to California. He worked in publicity for a company that had invented tattooing machine to identify dogs.
He entered filmmaking on whim, selling script to RKO for the 1948 picture Bodyguard, which he co-wrote with George W. George.
Anderson, Michael:
MA began as actor; then assistant director on Ustinov’s films School for Secrets, 1946; also co-directed with Ustinov; Solo directorial debut with B film, Waterfront, 1950; age 30.
Anderson, Wes:
University of Texas, Austin, philosophy 1990; aged 21
Aronofsky, Darren:
Harvard University: social anthropology and film
Antonioni:
University of Bologna, economics
Ashby:
Univ of Utah (false press release); no formal education
Attenborough:
Avildsen:
A was educated at the Hotchkiss School and at New York University.
Babenco
Barrymore, Lionel
Beaumont
Beatty:
stagehand at National Theatre, Washington, D.C. the summer;
Benton: University of Texas, Columbia University.
Benigni, Roberto:
Berenson, Bruce
BA in English, University of Sydney, 1964
Bogdanovich
City College; Stella Adler
Brown, Clarence: University (engineering)
Cattaneo
He attended London College of Printing for an art foundation course, and Leeds Polytechnic for a BA in Graphic Design (Film), he graduated from the Royal College of Art in 1989.
He was nominated for the Best Live Action Short Oscar for “Dear Rosie” (1990).
Clooney
Clooney was raised Roman Catholic but said in 1998 that he did not know if he believed “in Heaven, or even God.” He has said, “Yes, we were Catholic, big-time, whole family, whole group.”
Training:
Abrahamson, Lenny
Allen, Woody
Altman, Robert
Almodovar
Anderson, Michael
Anderson, Paul Thomas
The material shown to him at film school turned the experience into “homework or a chore,” and he decided to make 20-minute film that would be his “college.”
For $10,000, made up of gambling winnings, his girlfriend’s credit card, and money his father set aside for college, Anderson made Cigarettes & Coffee (1993), a short with multiple story lines with a twenty-dollar bill. The film was screened at the 1993 Sundance Festival Shorts. He decided to expand the film into a feature-length film and was subsequently invited to the 1994 Sundance Feature Film Program. Michael Caton-Jones, who served as Anderson’s mentor, saw him as man with “talent and a fully formed creative voice but not much hands-on experience” and gave him some hard and practical lessons.
While at the Sundance Feature Program, Anderson already had deal with Rysher Entertainment to direct his first feature, Sydney, retitled Hard Eight. After completing the film, Rysher re-edited it. Anderson, who still had workprint of his original cut, submitted the film to the 1996 Cannes Film Festival, where it was shown at the Un Certain Regard section.
Anderson managed to get the version released, but only after he retitled the film, and raised $200,000 to finish it; Anderson, Philip Baker Hall, Gwyneth Paltrow and John C. Reilly contributed the funding. The version released was Anderson’s and its acclaim launched his career.
Anderson, West:
Training: part-time as cinema projectionist
First Film: Bottle Rocket, 1996; aged 27 (based on short)
Aronofsky:
AFI American Film Institute, directing.
Antonioni: journalist, fascist film magazine, fired; studied film; assistant director, Rossellini
Antonioni: First Film: 1950, age 38 (before that shorts)
Ashby, Hal
Ashby moved from Utah to California, where he pursued a bohemian lifestyle and ultimately became an assistant film editor through a long apprenticeship.
His career gained momentum when he served as the editor of The Loved One (1965), an adaptation of the Evelyn Waugh novel that involved screenwriter Terry Southern and cinematographer Haskell Wexler.
After being Oscar nominate for Film Editing in 1967 for The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming, his big break occurred one year later when he won the award for In the Heat of the Night. Ashby often stated that the practice of editing provided him with the best filmmaking background outside of traditional university study and he carried the techniques learned as an editor with him when he began directing.
At the urging of mentor Norman Jewison, Ashby directed his first film, The Landlord, about the social dynamics of gentrification in Park Slope, Brooklyn, in 1970.
Training: assistant film editor, long apprenticeship; editor of The Loved One, 1965; Inspiration: Mentor Norman Jewison; 1967 Oscar winner for editing, In the Heat of Night
Avildsen, John
After starting out as assistant director to Arthur Penn and Otto Preminger, he made low-budget feature Joe (1970), which received good notices for Peter Boyle and moderate box-office business.
Avildsen’s first success came with the low-budget cult classic comedy Cry Uncle!, a 1971 film in the Troma Entertainment library that stars Allen Garfield.
This was followed by Save the Tiger (1973), which earned Jack Lemmon his first and only Oscar Award.
Attenborough: training: first, an accomplished actor
Babenco, Hector
Beatty, Warren: dropped out of college, moved to NYC Stella Adler Studio of Acting. TV before Film: shows, Studio One, 1957, Kraft Television Theatre, 1957, aged 24; Playhouse 90, 1959. Theater: “A Loss of Roses” Broadway, 1960 Tony nomination
Inspiration: Philadelphia Story, 1940 (he saw in the 1950s); Love Affair (1939), which he remade in 1994.
Breakthrough: Splendor in Grass, 1961; Bonnie and Clyde, 1967. aged 30, producer and star
Beaumont, Harry:
Benton, Robert:
Benton published book in 1959; first art director, then screenwriter (Bonnie and Clyde)
Benigni: theater, Rome
Bogdanovich:
Stella Adler for acting, the writing and programming MoMA, New Yorker
Brown, Clarence:
Assistant to French-born director Jacques Tourneur; co-directed, then solo, when Tourneur had accident
Cassavetes
C was born in New York City, the son of Greek American actress Katherine Cassavetes, who would feature in some of his films, and Greek immigrant Nicholas John Cassavetes who was born in Larissa to Aromanian parents from the village of Vrysochori.
He had an elder brother. Members of the Cassavetes family settled in Volos and Zagora. His early years were spent with his family in Greece; when he returned at the age of 7, he spoke no English.
He was raised on Long Island, New York. He attended Port Washington High School (now Paul D. Schreiber Senior High School) from 1945 to 1947 and participated in Port Weekly (the school paper), Red Domino (interclass play), football, and the Port Light (yearbook).
Cassavetes attended Blair Academy in New Jersey and spent semester at Plattsburgh, New York’s Champlain College before being expelled due to his failing grades. He spent few weeks hitchhiking to Florida and then transferred to AADA, encouraged by friends who told him the school was “packed with girls.”
He graduated in 1950 and met his future wife Gena Rowlands at her audition to enter the Academy in 1953. They were married four months later in 1954. He continued acting in the theater, took small parts in films, and began working on television in anthology series such as Alcoa Theatre.
By 1956, Cassavetes began teaching an alternative to method acting in his own workshop—co-founded with friend Burt Lane in New York City—in which performance would be based on character creation.
Cassavetes scorned Lee Strasberg’s Method-based Actors Studio, believing that the Method was “more a form of psychotherapy than of acting” which resulted in sentimental cliches and self-indulgent emotion. In contrast to the Actors Studio’s “moody, broody anguish,” the Cassavetes-Lane approach held that acting should be an expression of creative joy and exuberance, with emphasis on the character’s creation of “masks” in the process of interacting with other characters.
Cassavetes was invited to audition at the Actors Studio, and in response he and Lane devised a prank: they claimed to be performing a scene from a recent stage production but in fact improvised a performance on the spot, fooling an impressed Strasberg. Cassavetes then fabricated story about his financial troubles, prompting Strasberg to offer him a full scholarship to the Studio; Cassavetes promptly rejected it, feeling that Strasberg couldn’t know anything about acting to have been so easily fooled by the two ruses.
Cassavetes played bit-parts in B pictures and in TV serials, until gaining notoriety in 1955 as vicious killer in The Night Holds Terror, and as a juvenile delinquent in the live TV drama Crime in the Streets.
Cassavetes would repeat this performance credited as an “introducing” lead in the 1956 film version, which also included another future director, Mark Rydell, as his gang mate.
His first starring role in a feature was Edge of the City (1957), which co-starred Sidney Poitier. He was briefly under contract to MGM and co-starred with Robert Taylor in the western Saddle the Wind, written by Rod Serling. In the late 1950s, Cassavetes guest-starred in Beverly Garland’s groundbreaking crime drama, Decoy, about a New York City woman police undercover detective.
He played Johnny Staccato, the title character in TV series about jazz pianist who also worked as private detective. He directed five episodes of the series, which also features guest appearance by his wife Gena Rowlands. It was broadcast on NBC between September 1959 and March 1960, and then acquired by ABC; although critically acclaimed, the series was cancelled in September 1960.
Cattaneo (born July 1, 1964) attended London College of Printing for an art foundation course, and Leeds Polytechnic for a BA in Graphic Design (Film), he graduated from the Royal College of Art in 1989.
He was nominated for the Best Live Action Short Oscar for “Dear Rosie” (1990). He went on to make his feature film debut with The Full Monty (1997), which was a smash success both in the UK and internationally.
Clooney
Directors: Winners & Nominees:
72 winners (excluding 2023)
241+5= 246 (2 Daniels, Field, McDonaugh, Oustland)
A: 12
B: 20
C: 23 (includes Chung)
D: 8 (+2 Daniels) 10
E: 2
F: 14 (Fennellm and Field)
G: 7
H: 18
I: 2
J: 6
K: 7
L: 21
M: 20 (McDonagh) 21
N: 4
O: 1 (2 includes Oustland)
P: 13
Q:
R: 17
S: 19
T: 7
U:
V: 5 (Vinterberg)
W: 10
X
Y: 1
Z: 5 (includes Zhao)
Total: 243
Winners: 72
Nominees: 171
A (12 directors)
Abrahamson, Lenny:
Allen, Woody
Almodovar, Pedro (Spanish, for Spanish film)
Altman, Robert
Anderson, Michael
Anderson, Paul Thomas
Anderson, Wes
Antonioni, Michelangelo (Italian for English-speaking film)
Aronofsky, Darren
Ashby, Hal
Attenborough, Richard
Avildsen, John G.
B (20 Directors)
Babenco, Hector
Barrymore, Lionel
Beatty, Warren
Beaumont, Harry
Benigni, Roberto
Benton Robert
Beresford, Bruce
Bergman, Ingmar
Bertolucci, Bernardo
Bigelow, Kathryn
Bogdanovich, Peter
Bong, Joon-ho, Korean
Boorman, John
Borzage, Frank
Branagh, Kenneth
Brenon, Herbert
Brest, Martin
Brooks, James L.
Brooks, Richard
Brown, Clarence
C (23 directors)
Cacoyannis, Michael
Cameron, James
Campion, Jane
Capra, Frank
Cardiff, Jack
Cassavetes, John
Cattaneo, Peter
Chaplin, Charles
Chazelle, Damien
Chung, Lee Isaac (Minari)
Cimino, Michael
Clayton, Jack
Clooney, George
Coen, Ethan
Coen, Joel
Coppola, Francis Ford
Coppola, Sofia
Costner, Kevin
Crichton, Michael
Cuaron, Alfonso
Cukor, George
Cummings, Irving
Curtiz, Michael
D (8 directors) + 2 Daniels 10
Daldry, Stephen
Daniels, Lee
Daniels (2)
Dassin, Jules
Del Toro, Guillermo
DeMille, Cecil B.
Demme, Jonathan
Dieterle, William
Dmytryk, Edward
E
Eastwood, Clint
Egoyan, Atom
F (13)
Farrow, John
Fellini, Federico (Italian, for Italian movies)
Fennell, Emerald (Promising Young Woman)
Field, Todd (2022)
Figgis, Mike
Fincher, David
Fleming, Victor
Ford, John
Forman, Milos
Forster, Marc
Fosse, Bob
Franklin, Sidney
Frears, Stephen
Friedkin, William
G (7)
Gavras-Costa
Germi, Pietro
Gerwig, Greta
Gibson, Mel
Gilroy, Tony
Glenville, Peter
Greengrass, Paul
H (18)
Hackford, Taylor
Haggis, Paul
Hall, Alexander
Hallstrom, Lasse
Haneke, Michael
Hanson, Curtis
Harvey, Anthony
Hathaway, Henry
Hawks, Howard
Henry, Buck
Hicks, Scott
Hill, George Roy
Hiller, Arthur
Hitchcock, Alfred
Hooper, Tom
Howard, Ron
Hudson, Hugh
Huston, John
I (2)
Inarritu. Alejandro G.
Ivory, James
J (6)
Jackson, Peter
Jaffe, Roland
Jenkins, Barry
Jewison, Norman
Jonze, Spike
Jordan, Neil
K (7)
Kazan, Elia
Kieslowski, Krzystof
King, Henry
Koster, Henry
Kramer, Stanley
Kubrick, Stanley
Kurosawa, Akira
L (21)
La Cava, Gregory
Lang, Walter
Lanthymos, Yorgos
Lean, David
Lee, Spike
Lee, Ang
Leigh, Mike
Lelouch, Claude
Leonard, Robert Z.
LeRoy, Mervyn
Levinson, Barry
Linklater, Richard
Litvak, Anatole
Lloyd, Frank
Logan, Joshua
Lonergan, Kenneth
Lubitsch, Ernst
Lucas, George
Lumet, Sidney
Lynch, David
Lyne, Adrian
M (20) (21, includes McDonagh)
McCarey, Leo
McCarthy, Tom
McDonaugh, Martin (2022)
McKay, Adam
McQueen, Steve
Madden, John
Malick, Terrence
Malle, Louis
Mankiewicz, Joseph L.
Mann, Delbert
Mann, Michael
Marshall, Rob
Mendes, Sam
Mereilles, Fernando (Brazilian for Brazilian film)
Milestone, Lewis
Miller, Bennett
Miller, George
Minghella, Anthony
Minnelli, Vincente
Molinaro, Eduard
Mulligan, Robert
N (4)
Negulesco, Jean
Nichols, Mike
Nolan, Christopher
Noonan, Chris
O (1) + 1= 2
Olivier, Laurence
Oustland, Ruben (2022)
P (13)
Pakula, Alan J.
Parker, Alan
Paulikowski, Pawell
Payne, Alexander
Peele, Jordan
Penn, Arthur
Perry, Frank
Petersen, Wolfgang
Phillips, Todd
Polanski, Roman
Pollack, Sydney
Pontecorvio, Gillo
Preminger, Otto
R (17)
Radford, Michael
Redford, Robert
Reed, Carol
Reitman, Jason
Renoir, Jean
Richardson, Tony
Ritt, Martin
Robbins, Jerome
Robbins, Tim
Robson, Mark
Ross, Herbert
Rossen, Robert
Ruggles, Wesley
Rush, Richard
Russell, David O.
Russell, Ken
Rydell, Mark
S (19)
Schaffner, Franklin
Schertzinger, Victor
Schlesinger, John
Schnabel, Julian
Schroeder, Barbet
Scorsese, Martin
Scott, Ridley
Seaton, George
Sheridan, Jim
Shyamalan, M. Night
Singleton, John
Siodmak, Robert
Soderbergh, Steven
Spielberg, Steven
Sternberg, Josef von
Stevens, George
Stevenson, Robert
Stone, Oliver
Sturges, John
T (7)
Tarantino, Quentin
Taurog, Norman
Teshigahara, Hiroshi
Thompson, Lee J.
Troell, Jan
Truffaut, Francois
Tyldun, Morten
U
V (5)
Van Dyke, W. S.
Van Sant, Gus
Vidor, King
Villeneuve, Denis
Vinterberg, Thomas (Another Round)
W (10)
Walters, Charles
Weir, Peter
Welles, Orson
Wellman, William A.
Wertmueller, Lina
Wilde, Ted
Wilder, Billy
Wise, Robert
Wood, Sam
Wyler, William
Y
Yates, Peter
Z (5)
Zeffirelli, Franco
Zeitlin, Benh
Zemeckis, Robert
Zhao, Chloe (Nomadland)
Zinnemann, Fred
