Directors with the Most Oscars and More

These directors have won the most Oscars® for Directing:

John Ford (4) [photo left]: The Informer (35), The Grapes of Wrath (40), How Green Was My Valley (41), The Quiet Man (52) - no westerns

Mister Roberts, my favorite Ford film

Frank Capra (3): It Happened One Night (34), Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (36), You Can't Take It With You (38)

William Wyler (3): Mrs. Miniver (42), The Best Years of Our Lives (46), Ben-Hur (59) - two anti-war films
Best Years of Our Lives

Wyler has the most directing nominations with 12; Billy Wilder is next with 8
Wyler directed the most picture nominees (13), and winners (3).
Wyler has the most consecutive picture nominations (7); Capra is next with 4.
Wyler's films have the most total nominations (127) and wins (39).

Wyler directed the most acting nominations (35) and wins (13). Elia Kazan is second with 24 nominees and 9 winners.

Directors with triple wins as producer-director-writer:
Billy Wilder for The Apartment (1960)
Francis Ford Coppola for The Godfather, Part II (1974)
James L. Brooks for Terms of Endearment (1983)
Peter Jackson for The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (2003)
Joel and Ethan Coen for No Country for Old Men (2007)

Billy Wilder has 6 Oscars: 2 for directing, 3 for screenplays, 1 for producer.

Sunset Boulevard, opening shot, the best Wilder film for me

Nominations with No Wins: Clarence Brown (6) King Vidor, Alfred Hitchcock, and Robert Altman (5 each) Stanley Kubrick, Sidney Lumet, Federico Fellini, and Peter Weir (4 each) - a crime! a better group than those at 5

(what, no wins for Hitch?)

Best Picture Winners - whose director wasn't nominated:
Wings (27/28) dir. by William Wellman
Grand Hotel (31/32) dir. by Edmund Goulding
Driving Miss Daisy (89) dir. by Bruce Beresford

Frank Lloyd, winner for directing The Divine Lady (28/29), is the only winner whose film wasn't nominated for picture.

Directors with the most Best Picture Nominations:
William Wyler (13), John Ford (9), Mervyn LeRoy (8) Frank Capra, George Cukor, Henry King, Steven Spielberg, George Stevens, all 7 Michael Curtiz, David Lean, Martin Scorsese, Sam Wood, Fred Zinnemann, all 6 Spielberg and Scorsese are still active.

Female Director Nominees:
Lina Wertmuller (Seven Beauties, 76), Jane Campion (The Piano, 93), Sofia Coppola
(Lost in Translation (2003) Sofia became the first U.S. female director nominated
Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker, 2008) - became the first woman to win a directing Oscar® with this film

Two directing nominations in one year:
Steven Soderbergh (2000) for Erin Brockovich and Traffic (the Oscar® winner)

Michael Curtiz (1938), for Angels with Dirty Faces and Four Daughters
Clarence Brown (1929/30) for Romance and Anna Christie

Directors winning actor for their own film: Laurence Olivier (Hamlet, 48), and Roberto Benigni (Life Is Beautiful, 98)





Nominations for Producing, Acting, Directing, and Writing for the same film:
Orson Welles for Citizen Kane (1941)

Warren Beatty twice: Heaven Can Wait (1978), and  Reds (1981, winner for Best Director)