Favorite Directors

1. David Lynch

Born in precisely the kind of small-town American setting so familiar from his films, David Lynch spent his childhood being shunted from one state to another as his research scientist father kept getting relocated. He attended various art schools, married Peggy Lynch and then fathered future ...

Mulholland Dr. (2001)

2. Werner Herzog

Director | Fitzcarraldo

Director. Writer. Producer. Actor. Poet. He studied history, literature and theatre for some time, but didn't finish it and founded instead his own film production company in 1963. Later in his life, Herzog also staged several operas in Bayreuth, Germany, and at the Milan Scala in Italy. Herzog has...

Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht (1979)

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 ...

4. Claude Chabrol

Director | Le beau Serge

Claude Chabrol was born on June 24, 1930 in Paris, France. He was a director and writer, known for Le Beau Serge (1958), La Cérémonie (1995) and Story of Women (1988). He was married to Aurore Chabrol, Stéphane Audran and Agnès Goute. He died on September 12, 2010 in Paris, France.

5. Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Writer | Faustrecht der Freiheit

Above all, Rainer Werner Fassbinder was a rebel whose life and art was marked by gross contradiction. Openly homosexual, he married twice; one of his wives acted in his films and the other served as his editor. Accused variously by detractors of being anticommunist, male chauvinist, antiSemitic and...

6. Jean-Pierre Melville

Writer | Le samouraï

The name "Melville" is not immediately associated with film. It conjures up images of white whales and crackbrained captains, of naysaying notaries and soup-spilling sailors. It is the countersign to a realm of men and their deeds, both heroic and villainous. It is the American novel, with its ...

7. Ingmar Bergman

Writer | Smultronstället

Ernst Ingmar Bergman was born July 14, 1918, the son of a priest. The film and T.V. series, The Best Intentions (1992) is biographical and shows the early marriage of his parents. The film Sunday's Children (1992) depicts a bicycle journey with his father. In the miniseries Private Confessions (...

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 ...

9. Dario Argento

Writer | Profondo rosso

Dario Argento was born on September 7, 1940, in Rome, Italy, the first-born son of famed Italian producer Salvatore Argento and Brazilian fashion model Elda Luxardo. Argento recalls getting his ideas for filmmaking from his close-knit family from Italian folk tales told by his parents and other ...

10. 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.

11. 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 ...

12. Akira Kurosawa

Writer | Kakushi-toride no san-akunin

After training as a painter (he storyboards his films as full-scale paintings), Kurosawa entered the film industry in 1936 as an assistant director, eventually making his directorial debut with Sanshiro Sugata (1943). Within a few years, Kurosawa had achieved sufficient stature to allow him greater...

13. Lucio Fulci

Writer | Lo squartatore di New York

Lucio Fulci, born in Rome in 1927, remains as controversial in death as he was in life. A gifted craftsman with a sharp tongue and a wicked sense of dark humor, Fulci achieved some measure of notoriety for his gore epics of the late 1970s and early 1980s, but respect was long in coming.

Abandoning ...

14. Alex van Warmerdam

Actor | Ober

Alex van Warmerdam was born on August 14, 1952 in Haarlem, Noord-Holland, Netherlands. He is an actor and writer, known for Waiter (2006), Borgman (2013) and The Northerners (1992). He is married to Annet Malherbe. They have two children.

15. Peter Greenaway

Director | The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover

Peter Greenaway trained as a painter and began working as a film editor for the Central Office of Information in 1965. Shortly afterwards he started to make his own films. He has produced a wealth of short and feature-length films, but also paintings, novels and other books. He has held several ...

16. 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 ...

17. Julien Duvivier

Writer | Panique

Revered by such legendary fellow directors as Ingmar Bergman and Jean Renoir, Julien Duvivier is one of the most legendary figures in the history of French cinema. He is perhaps the most neglected of the "Big Five" of classic French cinema (the other four being Jean Renoir, Rene Clair, Jacques ...

18. Krzysztof Zanussi

Director | Struktura krysztalu

Born in 1939 in Warsaw, Poland. Documentary and feature film director. Studied physics at Warsaw University and philosophy at Jagiellonian University in Cracow. Graduated from Lodz Film Academy in 1966. Amateur film maker. His school diploma film 'Death of a Provincial' (Smierc prowincjala (1968)) ...

19. Joel Coen

Producer | The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

Joel Daniel Coen is an American filmmaker who regularly collaborates with his younger brother Ethan. They made Raising Arizona, Barton Fink, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, True Grit, O Brother Where Art Thou?, Burn After Reading, A Serious Man, Inside Llewyn Davis, Hail Caesar and other projects. Joel ...

20. 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 ...

21. Harry Kümel

Director | Malpertuis

Harry Kümel was born on January 27, 1940 in Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium. He is a director and writer, known for The Legend of Doom House (1971), Monsieur Hawarden (1968) and Eline Vere (1991).

22. Joseph Losey

Director | The Servant

Belonging to an important family clan in Wisconsin, Joseph Losey studied philosophy but was always interested in theater and thus worked together with Bertolt Brecht. After directing some shorts for MGM, he made his first important film, The Boy with Green Hair (1948), for RKO. While he was filming ...

23. Robert Hossein

Writer | Les misérables

The son of orchestra conductor André Hossein, Paris-born Robert Hossein was trained at René Simon's acting school. Hossein labored away as actor/director with the legendary Theatre Grand Guignol in Montmartre, then spent several years on the "legitimate" stage. In films from 1955's Rififi (Rififi (...

24. 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 ...

25. Michael Powell

Director | Peeping Tom

The son of Thomas William Powell and Mabel (nee Corbett). Michael Powell was always a self-confessed movie addict. He was brought up partly in Canterbury ("The Garden of England") and partly in the south of France (where his parents ran a hotel). Educated at Kings School, Canterbury and Dulwich ...

The Red Shoes (1948)

26. Alain Robbe-Grillet

Writer | Un bruit qui rend fou

Born in Brest, France, in 1922, Alain Robbe-Grillet initially studied mathematics and biology. He graduated from the Paris-based Institut National Agronomique (National Institute of Agronomy) in 1945 and embarked on a career of scientific research in the tropics and in France. Then at age 30 he ...

27. Jacques Tourneur

Director | Cat People

Born in Paris in 1904, Tourneur went to Hollywood with his father, director Maurice Tourneur around 1913. He started out as a script clerk and editor for his father, then graduated to such jobs as directing shorts (often with the pseudonym Jack Turner), both in France and America. He was hired to ...

28. Robert Aldrich

Director | Emperor of the North Pole

Robert Aldrich entered the film industry in 1941 when he got a job as a production clerk at RKO Radio Pictures. He soon worked his way up to script clerk, then became an assistant director, a production manager and an associate producer. He began writing and directing for TV series in the early ...

29. Robert Altman

Director | Gosford Park

Robert Altman was born on February 20th, 1925 in Kansas City, Missouri, to B.C. (an insurance salesman) and Helen Altman. He entered St. Peters Catholic school at the age six, and spent a short time at a Catholic high school. From there, he went to Rockhurst High School. It was then that he started...

30. Douglas Sirk

Director | Schlußakkord

Film director Douglas Sirk, whose reputation blossomed in the generation after his 1959 retirement from Hollywood filmmaking, was born Hans Detlef Sierck on April 26, 1897, in Hamburg, Germany, to a journalist. Both of his parents were Danish, and the future director would make movies in German, ...

31. Fritz Lang

Actor | Le mépris

Fritz Lang was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1890. His father managed a construction company. His mother, Pauline Schlesinger, was Jewish but converted to Catholicism when Lang was ten. After high school, he enrolled briefly at the Technische Hochschule Wien and then started to train as a painter. ...

32. 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 ...

33. David Fincher

Director | Se7en

David Fincher was born in 1962 in Denver, Colorado, and was raised in Marin County, California. When he was 18 years old he went to work for John Korty at Korty Films in Mill Valley. He subsequently worked at ILM (Industrial Light and Magic) from 1981-1983. Fincher left ILM to direct TV commercials...

34. George Roy Hill

Director | The Sting

George Roy Hill was never able to 'hit it off' with the critics despite the fact that 2 of his films - Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), and The Sting (1973) - had remained among the top 10 box office hits by 1976. His work was frequently derided as 'impersonal' or lacking in stylistic ...

35. David Cronenberg

Actor | The Fly

David Cronenberg, also known as the King of Venereal Horror or the Baron of Blood, was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in 1943. His father, Milton Cronenberg, was a journalist and editor, and his mother, Esther (Sumberg), was a piano player. After showing an inclination for literature at an early...

36. 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 ...

37. John Huston

Director | The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

An eccentric rebel of epic proportions, this Hollywood titan reigned supreme as director, screenwriter and character actor in a career that endured over five decades. The ten-time Oscar-nominated legend was born John Marcellus Huston in Nevada, Missouri, on August 5, 1906. His ancestry was English,...

38. Sidney Lumet

Director | 12 Angry Men

Sidney Lumet was a master of cinema, best known for his technical knowledge and his skill at getting first-rate performances from his actors -- and for shooting most of his films in his beloved New York. He made over 40 movies, often complex and emotional, but seldom overly sentimental. Although ...

39. John Schlesinger

Director | Midnight Cowboy

Oscar-winning director John Schlesinger, who was born in London, on February 16, 1926, was the eldest child in a solidly middle-class Jewish family. Berbard Schlesinger, his father, was a pediatrician, and his mother, Winifred, was a musician. He served in the Army in the Far East during World War ...

40. Robert Bresson

Writer | Au hasard Balthazar

Robert Bresson trained as a painter before moving into films as a screenwriter, making a short film (atypically a comedy), Public Affairs (1934) in 1934. After spending more than a year as a German POW during World War II, he made his debut with Angels of Sin (1943) in 1943. His next film, The ...

41. Richard Linklater

Director | Waking Life

Self-taught writer-director Richard Stuart Linklater was born in Houston, Texas, to Diane Margaret (Krieger), who taught at a university, and Charles W. Linklater III. Richard was among the first and most successful talents to emerge during the American independent film renaissance of the 1990s. ...

42. Todd Solondz

Director | Welcome to the Dollhouse

Todd Solondz was born in Newark, New Jersey. One of his earliest jobs in the film industry was when, as a young man, he worked as a messenger for the Writers' Guild of America. During this time, he wrote several screenplays.

Solondz's first color film with sync sound was the short "Schatt's Last ...

43. Fred Zinnemann

Director | A Man for All Seasons

Initially grew up wanting to be a violinist, but while at the University of Vienna decided to study law. While doing so, he became increasingly interested in American film and decided that was what he wanted to do. He became involved in European filmaking for a short time before going to America to...

44. Arthur Penn

Director | Bonnie and Clyde

Arthur Penn was born on September 27, 1922 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. He was a director and producer, known for Bonnie and Clyde (1967), Little Big Man (1970) and The Miracle Worker (1962). He was married to Peggy Maurer. He died on September 28, 2010 in Manhattan, New York City, New York,...

45. Nicolas Roeg

Director | Don't Look Now

When he made his directorial debut in 1970, Nicolas Roeg was already a 23-year veteran of the British film industry, starting out in 1947 as an editing apprentice and working his way up to cinematographer twelve years later. He first came to attention as part of the second unit on David Lean's ...

46. 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 ...

47. Peter Jackson

Producer | The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

Sir Peter Jackson made history with The Lord of the Rings trilogy, becoming the first person to direct three major feature films simultaneously. The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King were nominated for and collected a slew of awards from around the globe, with The ...

48. Paul Newman

Actor | The Hustler

Screen legend, superstar, and the man with the most famous blue eyes in movie history, Paul Leonard Newman was born on January 26, 1925, in Cleveland, Ohio, the second son of Arthur Sigmund Newman (died 1950) and Theresa Fetsko (died 1982). His elder brother was Arthur S. Newman Jr., named for ...

49. Michelangelo Antonioni

Writer | Blow-Up

Together with Fellini, Bergman and Kurosawa, Michelangelo Antonioni is credited with defining the modern art film. And yet Antonioni's cinema is also recognized today for defying any easy categorization, with his films ultimately seeming to belong to their own distinctive genre. Indeed, the ...

50. Carlos Saura

Writer | Carmen

Spanish director, writer, producer (2 films) and actor (2 films). His interest in cinema started when he was very young. His mother, who was a pianist, instilled in him the liking for music, and his brother, Antonio, who was a painter, the passion for art. When he was an teenager he started to ...

51. Francesco Barilli

Director | L'urlo

Francesco Barilli was born on February 4, 1943 in Parma, Emilia-Romagna, Italy. He is a director and writer, known for L'urlo (2019), The Perfume of the Lady in Black (1974) and Hotel Fear (1978).

52. Jacques Becker

Writer | Le trou

His interest in films was stimulated by a meeting with King Vidor, who offered him employment in the US as actor and assistant director. However, he remained in France and became assistant to Jean Renoir, a friend of the family, during that director's peak period (1932-39). In 1934 he ventured ...

53. Sergio Martino

Director | Vendetta dal futuro

Talented, prolific and versatile writer/director Sergio Martino has made a vast array of often solid and enjoyable films in such diverse genres as horror, comedy, Western and science-fiction in a career that spans over 40 years.

Martino was born on July 19, 1938, in Rome, Italy. His grandfather was ...

54. Bernard Rose

Director | Candyman

Born on 4th August 1960, in London, England, Bernard Rose began his career by making Super 8 films at the age of 9. The BBC held an amateur movie competition which he won in 1975, causing his 3-minute film to air on the BBC. He later worked for Jim Henson on the last season of The Muppet Show, as a...

55. Herbert Ross

Director | The Turning Point

Herbert Ross was born on May 13, 1927 in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA. He was a director and producer, known for The Turning Point (1977), The Goodbye Girl (1977) and The Secret of My Success (1987). He was married to Lee Radziwill and Nora Kaye. He died on October 9, 2001 in New York ...

56. Alex Cox

Director | Repo Man

Throughout his years in the industry, Alex Cox, an English writer-director, has not only proven his loyalty and integrity to cult cinema, but also his love for it. This all began in 1977, when Cox dropped out of Oxford University to study Radio, Film & TV at Bristol until graduating in 1977. Seeing...

Repo Man (1984)

57. John Carpenter

Writer | The Fog

John Howard Carpenter was born in Carthage, New York, to mother Milton Jean (Carter) and father Howard Ralph Carpenter. His family moved to Bowling Green, Kentucky, where his father, a professor, was head of the music department at Western Kentucky University. He attended Western Kentucky ...

58. Don Coscarelli

Writer | Bubba Ho-Tep

In much the same way that director George A. Romero creative output has been primarily centered around the highly successful "Dead" series of zombie films, then fellow fantasy director Don Coscarelli has for over two decades seen his universe swirling around the lesser successful, but equally cult,...

59. Henri-Georges Clouzot

Writer | Le salaire de la peur

Beginning his film career as a screenwriter, Henri-Georges Clouzot switched over to directing and in 1943 had the distinction of having his film The Raven (1943) banned by both the German forces occupying France and the Free French forces fighting them, but for different reasons. He shot to ...

60. Claude Sautet

Writer | Un coeur en hiver

Claude Sautet was born on February 23, 1924 in Montrouge, Seine [now Hauts-de-Seine], France. He was a writer and director, known for A Heart in Winter (1992), Nelly & Monsieur Arnaud (1995) and The Things of Life (1970). He was married to Graziella Sautet. He died on July 22, 2000 in Paris, ...

Un coeur en hiver (1992)

61. Dino Risi

Director | Il sorpasso

Dino Risi became a movie director by chance. In 1940 he met Alberto Lattuada at a friend's boutique. Lattuada told him they needed an assistant director for the movie Piccolo mondo antico (1941). Risi accepted just for fun, not for work. Later, he became a psychiatrist and wrote some articles for a...

62. Louis Malle

Director | Au revoir les enfants

Louis Malle, the descendant of a French nobleman who made a fortune in beet sugar during the Napoleonic Wars, created films that explored life and its meaning. Malle's family discouraged his early interest in film but, in 1950, allowed him to enter the Institute of Advanced Cinematographic Studies ...

63. 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 ...

64. Terry Gilliam

Writer | Brazil

Terry Gilliam was born near Medicine Lake, Minnesota. When he was 12 his family moved to Los Angeles where he became a fan of MAD magazine. In his early twenties he was often stopped by the police who suspected him of being a drug addict and Gilliam had to explain that he worked in advertising. In ...

65. Wes Anderson

Director | Fantastic Mr. Fox

Wesley Wales Anderson was born in Houston, Texas. His mother, Texas Ann (Burroughs), is an archaeologist turned real estate agent, and his father, Melver Leonard Anderson, worked in advertising and PR. He has two brothers, Eric and Mel. Anderson's parents divorced when he was a young child, an ...

66. Terry Zwigoff

Director | Ghost World

Born in Appleton, Wisconsin, Zwigoff held several jobs before making his breakthrough feature: the documentary Crumb (1994) in 1994. His previous jobs included musician, shipping clerk, printer and welfare office worker. In fact, Zwigoff traces his film career back to discovering a rare blues ...

67. Ken Russell

Director | The Devils

Ken Russell tried several professions before choosing to become a film director; he was a still photographer and a dancer and he even served in the Army, but film was his destiny. He began by making several short films which paved the way for his brilliant television films of the 1960s that are ...

68. Gualtiero Jacopetti

Writer | Mondo cane

Gualtiero Jacopetti was born on September 4, 1919 in Barga, Tuscany, Italy. He was a writer and director, known for A Dog's Life (1962), Goodbye Uncle Tom (1971) and Mondo candido (1975). He was married to Jolanda Kaldaras. He died on August 17, 2011 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.

69. Paul Bartel

Actor | Eating Raoul

Paul Bartel was born in Brooklyn in 1938. He decided he wanted to direct animated movies when he was 11 and by 13 had spent a summer working at New York's UPA animation studio. He majored in theater arts at UCLA, and received a Fulbright scholarship to study film direction in Rome, producing a ...

70. Tony Richardson

Director | Tom Jones

The son of a Shipley chemist he was initially connected with the stage first with the post war Shipley Young Theatre then with the Bradford Civic Theatre where he came into contact with the Bradford born author J B Priestley who recognising his potential commissioned him to write a TV documentary. ...

71. Massimo Dallamano

Cinematographer | Per un pugno di dollari

Massimo Dallamano was born on April 17, 1917 in Milan, Lombardy, Italy. He was a cinematographer and writer, known for A Fistful of Dollars (1964), Tierra mágica (1959) and What Have You Done to Solange? (1972). He died on November 14, 1976 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.

72. Karel Reisz

Director | The French Lieutenant's Woman

Karel Reisz was born on July 21, 1926 in Ostrava, Czechoslovakia [now Czech Republic]. He was a director and producer, known for The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981), Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) and Morgan! (1966). He was married to Betsy Blair and Julia Coppard. He died on November 25...

73. Mike Leigh

Director | Secrets & Lies

Mike Leigh is an English film and theatre director, screenwriter and playwright. He studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) and further at the Camberwell School of Art, the Central School of Art and Design and the London School of Film Technique. He began his career as a theatre ...

74. Paul Mazursky

Actor | An Unmarried Woman

Paul Mazursky was born on April 25, 1930 in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for An Unmarried Woman (1978), Harry and Tonto (1974) and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969). He was married to Betsy Mazursky. He died on June 30, 2014 in Beverly Grove, ...

75. Mario Bava

Cinematographer | Ecologia del delitto

Italian director Mario Bava was born on July 31, 1914 in the coastal northern Italian town of Sanremo. His father, Eugenio Bava (1886-1966), was a cinematographer in the early days of the Italian film industry. Bava was trained as a painter, and when he eventually followed his father into film ...

76. Paul Verhoeven

Director | RoboCop

Paul Verhoeven graduated from the University of Leiden, with a degree in math and physics. He entered the Royal Netherlands Navy, where he began his film career by making documentaries for the Navy and later for TV. In 1969, he directed the popular Dutch TV series, Floris (1969), about a medieval ...

77. Delbert Mann

Director | Marty

Delbert Mann, the Oscar-winning film director, was born Delbert Martin Mann Jr. in Lawrence, Kansas, in 1920. His father moved the family to Nashville, Tennesse, after taking a teaching position at Scarritt College. The young Mann graduated from Vanderbilt University, where he met his future wife, ...

78. Michael Winner

Director | Death Wish

Winner was an only child, born in Hampstead, London, England, to Helen (née Zlota) and George Joseph Winner (1910-1975), a company director. His family was Jewish; his mother was Polish and his father of Russian extraction. Following his father's death, Winner's mother gambled recklessly and sold ...

79. Barbet Schroeder

Director | La virgen de los sicarios

Barbet Schroeder was born on August 26, 1941 in Tehran, Iran. He is a director and producer, known for Our Lady of the Assassins (2000), Single White Female (1992) and Murder by Numbers (2002). He has been married to Bulle Ogier since April 1991.

80. Nikos Nikolaidis

Writer | Proini peripolos

Nikos Nikolaidis was born on October 25, 1939 in Athens, Greece. He was a writer and director, known for Morning Patrol (1987), Ta kourelia tragoudane akoma... (1979) and O hamenos ta pairnei ola (2002). He died on September 5, 2007 in Athens, Greece.

81. Terence Fisher

Director | Dracula

Terence Fisher was born in Maida Vale, England, in 1904. Raised by his grandmother in a strict Christian Scientist environment, Fisher left school while still in his teens to join the Merchant Marine. By his own account he soon discovered that a life at sea was not for him, so he left the service ...

82. Bill Forsyth

Director | Local Hero

Bill Forsyth was born on July 29, 1946 in Glasgow, Strathclyde, Scotland, UK. He is a director and writer, known for Local Hero (1983), Gregory's Girl (1980) and Housekeeping (1987).

83. Peter Sasdy

Director | The Lonely Lady

Peter Sasdy was born on May 27, 1935 in Budapest, Hungary. He is a director and producer, known for The Lonely Lady (1983), Welcome to Blood City (1977) and Journey to the Unknown (1968). He has been married to Myrtill Nádasi since July 24, 1965. They have two children.

84. Nicholas Ray

Director | Rebel Without a Cause

Nicholas Ray was born Raymond Nicholas Kienzle in 1911, in small-town Galesville, Wisconsin, to Lena (Toppen) and Raymond Joseph Kienzle, a contractor and builder. He was of German and Norwegian descent. Ray's early experience with film came with some radio broadcasting in high school. He left the ...

85. John Hughes

Writer | Planes, Trains & Automobiles

John Hughes was an American film director, film producer, and screenwriter. He was credited for creating some of the most memorable comedy films of the 1980s and the 1990s, when he was at the height of his career. He had a talent for writing coming-of-age stories, and for depicting fairly realistic...

86. Roy Ward Baker

Director | A Night to Remember

Roy Ward Baker's first job in films was as a teaboy at the Gainsborough Studios in London, England, but within three years he was working as an assistant director. During World War II, he worked in the Army Kinematograph Unit under Eric Ambler, a writer and film producer, who, after the war, gave ...

87. Kira Muratova

Director | Nastroyshchik

Kira Muratova was born on November 5, 1934 in Soroca, Romania [now Moldova]. She was a director and writer, known for Nastroyshchik (2004), Vtorostepennye lyudi (2001) and The Asthenic Syndrome (1989). She was married to Aleksandr Muratov and Yevgeni Golubenko. She died on June 6, 2018 in Odessa, ...

88. William Friedkin

Director | To Live and Die in L.A.

Friedkin's mother was an operating room nurse. His father was a merchant seaman, semi-pro softball player and ultimately sold clothes in a men's discount chain. Ultimately, his father never earned more than $50/week in his whole life and died indigent. Eventually young Will became infatuated with ...

89. Penelope Spheeris

Director | Suburbia

Spheeris is often referred to as a 'rock 'n roll anthropologist'.

In 1974 she formed the first Los Angeles music video production company, ROCK 'N REEL. She concluded her music video work with the Grammy-nominated, "Bohemian Rhapsody" video for "Wayne's World". Spheeris' feature film debut was the ...

90. Takashi Miike

Director | Jûsan-nin no shikaku

Takashi Miike was born in the small town of Yao on the outskirts of Osaka, Japan. His main interest growing up was motorbikes, and for a while he harbored ambitions to race professionally. At the age of 18 he went to study at the film school in Yokohama founded by renowned director Shôhei Imamura, ...

91. Jean-Jacques Beineix

Producer | 37°2 le matin

A rabid movie fan when he was young, Jean-Jacques Beineix first studied medicine before entering the movie business. During the seventies, he became an established assistant director, working with Claude Berri, René Clément, Claude Zidi and even Jerry Lewis. But, like many assistants, Beineix's ...

92. Umberto Lenzi

Writer | La casa 3

Born in Massa Marittima, Italy on August 6, 1931, Umberto Lenzi was a movie enthusiast since his early grade school years. During those years, he founded various film fan clubs while studying law. Lenzi started out as a journalist for various local newspapers and magazines. Lenzi put off his law ...

93. Jack Hill

Writer | Spider Baby or, the Maddest Story Ever Told

Jack Hill, sometimes referred to as a legendary cult-film director, grew up around movies--his father was a set designer for Warner Brothers since 1925, and later for Walt Disney Studios, where he eventually designed the Disneyland Castle. Jack went to the University of California to study film, ...

94. Don Siegel

Director | Escape from Alcatraz

Don Siegel was educated at Cambridge University, England. In Hollywood from the mid-'30s, he began his career as an editor and second unit director. In 1945 he directed two shorts (Hitler Lives (1945) and Star in the Night (1945)) which both won Academy Awards. His first feature as a director was ...

95. Orson Welles

Actor | Citizen Kane

His father, Richard Head Welles, was a well-to-do inventor, his mother, Beatrice (Ives) Welles, a beautiful concert pianist; Orson Welles was gifted in many arts (magic, piano, painting) as a child. When his mother died in 1924 (when he was nine) he traveled the world with his father. He was ...

96. Freddie Francis

Cinematographer | The Straight Story

During his last years at school he spent most of his time writing a thesis on 'the future of film' On leaving school he joined Gaumont British Studios at Lime Grove as an apprentice to a stills photographer for a year. He claimed this taught him more about the art of photography than any other form...

97. Eugenio Martín

Director | Pánico en el Transiberiano

Eugenio Martín was born on May 15, 1925 in Ceuta, Spain. He was a writer and director, known for Horror Express (1972), The Ugly Ones (1966) and Viaje romántico a Granada (1955). He was married to Lone Fleming. He died on January 23, 2023 in Spain.

98. Damiano Damiani

Writer | Il giorno della civetta

Damiano Damiani was born on July 23, 1922 in Pasiano di Pordenone, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Italy. He was a writer and director, known for Mafia (1968), The Reunion (1963) and Confessions of a Police Captain (1971). He died on March 7, 2013 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.

99. Whit Stillman

Director | Love & Friendship

Whit Stillman was born in 1952 and raised in Cornwall in upstate New York, the son of a impoverished debutante from Philadelphia and a Democratic politician from Washington D.C. Stillman graduated from Harvard in 1973 and started out as a journalist in Manhattan, New York City.

In 1980 he met and ...

100. Georges Lautner

Director | Le professionnel

Georges Lautner was born on January 24, 1926 in Nice, Alpes-Maritimes, France. He was a director and writer, known for The Professional (1981), Crooks in Clover (1963) and Galia (1966). He was married to Caroline Lautner. He died on November 22, 2013 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, France.