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Curated category

American action film directors

  • Simon KinbergSimon Kinberg has a small cameo in one of his own scripts. In Mr. & Mrs. Smith, he plays the banker who chats with John Smith at a dinner party.
  • Steven SpielbergSteven Spielberg was born on the 18th of December 1946, in Cincinnati, Ohio, and by the time he was twelve years old, he had already staged and filmed a…
  • Robert RodriguezRobert Rodriguez made his first feature film for $7,000. That budget covered the entire production of El Mariachi, an action film shot in Spanish in 1992.
  • J. J. AbramsJ. J. Abrams wrote his first film score at age 16 for a low-budget horror movie called Nightbeast. That was 1982, and it was not the work of a film student…
  • Russo brothersThe Russo brothers directed Avengers: Endgame on a budget paid in part by student loans and credit cards. That credit card film came first.
  • John SingletonJohn Daniel Singleton walked into the Cannes Film Festival in 1991 as a 23-year-old first-time director, his debut feature Boyz n the Hood already drawing…
  • Patty JenkinsPatty Jenkins was seven years old when her father died during a NATO mock dogfight. He was thirty-one years old, a U.S. Air Force fighter pilot who had…
  • Colin TrevorrowColin Trevorrow grew up singing in the chorus of the San Francisco Opera, a detail that seems almost too cinematic for a boy who would later direct one of…
  • James MangoldJames Mangold grew up in Washingtonville, New York, a small Hudson Valley town, but his ambitions pointed far beyond it.
  • Jon FavreauJon Favreau grew up in Flushing, Queens, the only child of a schoolteacher mother who died of leukemia when he was just twelve years old.