Academy Award for Best Director

• 1. Introduction

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  The Academy Award for Best Director was first presented in 1929 as two separate prizes. Frank Borzage claimed one for the dramatic film 7th Heaven. Lewis Milestone claimed the other for the comedy Two Arabian Knights. The Academy merged those categories into a single award the following year, and that unified prize has been given at 98 ceremonies since. Of the 260 individual directors nominated across that history, only 9 have been women. Only 3 of them have won. Meanwhile, one director earned the award four times. Another collected five nominations and never won.

• 2. One Film at a Time

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  For the first eleven years of the Academy Awards, a director could be nominated for more than one film at the same ceremony. Michael Curtiz put that policy to the test at the 11th ceremony. He received nominations for both Angels with Dirty Faces and Four Daughters in the same year. The Academy revised the rules in response, limiting each director to one nomination per ceremony. That limit eventually eased. Steven Soderbergh is the only director to have earned two nominations under the revised rules, recognized for both Erin Brockovich and Traffic in 2000. He won for Traffic. Nominees come from a single transferable vote within the directors branch of the Academy. Winners are determined by a plurality vote of the full eligible membership. Those accumulated votes over nearly a century have produced a record book with remarkable extremes. John Ford sits at its summit.

• 3. The Record Books

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  Of Ford's victories, only one film, How Green Was My Valley in 1941, also won Best Picture. Ford also won in back-to-back years, 1940 and 1941. Only two other directors have won consecutively: Joseph L. Mankiewicz in 1949 and 1950, and Alejandro González Iñárritu in 2014 and 2015.

  William Wyler won three times, as did Frank Capra. Wyler leads the nominations list with twelve, including a stretch of four consecutive years. Martin Scorsese is currently second in nominations with ten.

  Alfred Hitchcock received five nominations without ever winning the prize. Robert Altman and King Vidor each received five nominations without a win. Clarence Brown collected six nominations without winning, the most of any director never to have taken the prize.

  Of the 92 films that won Best Picture and were also nominated for Best Director, 71 won the directing award as well. Four directors won Best Director for films that did not win Best Picture: Frank Borzage, George Stevens, Ang Lee, and Alfonso Cuarón. Francis Ford Coppola is the only director nominated for every film in a trilogy. He received nods for all three Godfather films and won for the second.

  Six directors collected the prize on their very first feature film, a coincidence that runs deeper than it first appears.

• 4. Debut Winners

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  Delbert Mann was the first to win on a debut feature, taking the prize for Marty in 1955. Jerome Robbins co-directed West Side Story with Robert Wise in 1961 and won the award alongside him. Robert Redford won for Ordinary People in 1980. James L. Brooks won for Terms of Endearment in 1983. Kevin Costner won for Dances With Wolves in 1990. Sam Mendes won for American Beauty in 1999.

  Robbins holds a distinction no other winner shares. He made no other feature film. West Side Story was his only directing credit, and he remains the only winner to have taken the prize for his sole career work.

  Four directing teams have been nominated together across the award's history, earning five nominations and winning on three occasions. Among them, Joel and Ethan Coen are the only siblings to have won. They were nominated jointly for No Country for Old Men in 2007, winning that year, and again for True Grit in 2010. Warren Beatty and Buck Henry were nominated together for Heaven Can Wait in 1978 but did not win. Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert won as a team for Everything Everywhere All at Once in 2022.

  It took nearly five decades after the award's founding for a woman to appear on the ballot as a directing nominee.

• 5. Barriers and Firsts

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  Lina Wertmüller received the first directing nomination given to a woman, for Seven Beauties in 1976. Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win the award, for The Hurt Locker. James Cameron and Kathryn Bigelow, who were once married, are the only former couple in which both partners have won the directing prize. Cameron claimed the award for Titanic in 1997. They are also the only ex-married couple to have been nominated against each other at the same ceremony. Jane Campion was the first woman nominated twice. Her nominations came for The Piano in 1993 and The Power of the Dog in 2021, and she won for the latter. Chloé Zhao became the first woman of color to win the prize, for Nomadland in 2020. Zhao earned a second nomination for Hamnet in 2025. Of those nominated across the award's full history, only 2 women have received more than one nomination, compared with 101 men.

  John Singleton became the first Black director nominated for the award, for Boyz n the Hood in 1991. He was 24 years and 44 days old at the time, making him also the youngest nominee in the category's history. Steve McQueen was the first Black nominee to direct a Best Picture winner, for 12 Years a Slave. Barry Jenkins achieved the same distinction three years later, with Moonlight in 2016.

  David Lean was the first non-American to win the prize. He took the award for The Bridge on the River Kwai in 1957 and again for Lawrence of Arabia in 1962. Five decades then passed before another non-American director won. Ang Lee became the first Asian director to win, for Brokeback Mountain in 2005, and won again for Life of Pi in 2012. Alfonso Cuarón was the first Mexican and first Latin American winner, taking the prize for Gravity in 2013 and again for Roma in 2018.

  Damien Chazelle became the youngest winner when he received the prize for La La Land at 32 years and 38 days old. Clint Eastwood is the oldest winner, having claimed the award for Million Dollar Baby at 74 years and 272 days. Martin Scorsese is the oldest nominee, his nomination for Killers of the Flower Moon coming at 81 years and 67 days. Paul Thomas Anderson is the most recent winner, for One Battle After Another at the 98th ceremony.