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Curated playlist

Directors of Best Film BAFTA Award winners

  • Martin ScorseseMartin Scorsese's love of movies began because asthma kept him out of games.
  • Woody AllenWoody Allen failed a film production course at New York University, then went on to direct Annie Hall.
  • Steven SpielbergSteven Spielberg walked into Universal Studios without a pass, and the guard waved him in.
  • David LynchDavid Lynch began as a painter who just wanted his canvases to move. That wish led him to film.
  • Stanley KubrickAfter copycat crimes and death threats, Stanley Kubrick pulled A Clockwork Orange from release in the United Kingdom.
  • Christopher NolanChristopher Nolan has no smartphone and no email address. He hand-delivers his scripts to the actors he wants.
  • Peter JacksonPeter Jackson saw King Kong at nine, and a few years later tried to remake it with stop-motion models he built himself.
  • Roman PolanskiRoman Polanski survived the Holocaust by pretending to be Catholic. As a boy in Poland, he memorized prayers to hide.
  • Paul Thomas AndersonPaul Thomas Anderson, the American filmmaker known by his initials PTA, earned a C+ on his very first film school assignment. The task at New York University was simple: write a single page of screenplay. Anderson handed in a page from…
  • William WylerDirector William Wyler once made Henry Fonda do forty takes of one scene. His only note was the word again.
  • François TruffautIn 1958 François Truffaut was the only French critic not invited to Cannes. A year later, Cannes gave him Best Director.
  • Laurence OlivierLaurence Olivier's 1948 film Hamlet was the first non-American film to win Best Picture.
  • David LeanFilm critics spent two hours tearing apart David Lean's Ryan's Daughter to his face at a New York lunch.
  • Ridley ScottRidley Scott once ranked 31st out of 31 in his school class. He later kept that report on his office wall.
  • Ben AffleckBen Affleck directed Argo, and for it he collected the Golden Globe, the Directors Guild Award and the BAFTA for Best Director without ever being nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director. No director had done that before him. The…
  • John Madden (director)Director John Madden's Shakespeare in Love beat Saving Private Ryan for Best Picture.

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