Get Reel With This Quiz on Famous Filmmakers

Sam Mendes was a veteran theater director when he went to work on his first feature, “American Beauty,” which won Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director in 2000. The script was given to Mendes by Steven Spielberg, who discovered the director after seeing his stage productions of “Oliver!” and “Cabaret.”

Director Christopher Nolan cast Michael Caine in eight of his films, starting with 2005’s “Batman Begins.” When scheduling for Caine couldn’t be worked out in person, Nolan still cast the actor as a voice in 2017’s “Dunkirk.”

Quentin Tarantino’s first feature film was 1992’s “Reservoir Dogs,” which was made on a shoestring budget. The director wanted to use the song “Stuck in the Middle With You” in the film, and when EMI Music executive Pat Lucas asked Tarantino what his music budget was, he said it was $30,000. Lucas said “OK, the price is $30,000,” which was still far less than the track’s market value.

“Home Alone,” “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” “The Breakfast Club,” “Pretty in Pink,” and “Sixteen Candles” are among the movies that filmmaker John Hughes set in Chicago and its suburbs. Hughes was born in Michigan and moved to Chicago as a child.

Tim Burton’s “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” was a more direct interpretation of Roald Dahl’s 1964 novel than the earlier 1971 film “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” starring Gene Wilder. The 1971 film featured many characters bursting into song, while in both the book and Burton’s film, only the Oompa Loompas sing.

With such famous films as "2001: A Space Odyssey," "The Shining," and "A Clockwork Orange" on his résumé, it’s surprising that Stanley Kubrick never took home a Best Director statue from the Academy Awards. However, he’s among esteemed company in his losing streak — Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, and Akira Kurosawa never won the award either. Martin Scorsese, meanwhile, won for "The Departed," and Kevin Costner won for "Dances With Wolves."

For several decades, the Academy Award for Best Director always went to a man. (In the first 80 years of the category's existence, only three women were even nominated.) But that finally changed in 2010, when Kathryn Bigelow, director of the war drama "The Hurt Locker," took home the golden statue over James Cameron, Quentin Tarantino, Lee Daniels, and Jason Reitman. It took more than a decade for another woman to join her: Chinese filmmaker Chloe Zhao won Best Director for “Nomadland” in 2021.

Few directors have so deftly captured the subtle nuances and overt injustices of the Black experience like Spike Lee. Since rising to fame with 1989’s "Do the Right Thing," a film about racial tensions in one Brooklyn neighborhood, Lee has directed several films — including "Malcolm X," "4 Little Girls," and "She's Gotta Have It" — deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress.

The Wachowskis (sisters Lana and Lilly Wachowski) expertly captured the growing possibilities — and fears — of the new digital age in the 1999 hit "The Matrix." In the film, Neo (Keanu Reeves) navigates both the robot-infested real world and a cozy simulation, aka "the Matrix," that has all of humanity in its thrall. The original film was such a sensation that it spawned three sequels, including 2021’s "The Matrix Resurrections."

Some of the world’s most famous Westerns are actually based on jidaigeki, or period dramas, by legendary Japanese director Akira Kurosawa. "The Magnificent Seven" (1960) is directly based on Kurosawa’s "The Seven Samurai," and "A Fistful of Dollars," Sergio Leone’s 1964 "spaghetti Western" starring Clint Eastwood, borrows the plot and even specific shots from Kurosawa’s "Yojimbo."

Before creating indelible sci-fi/fantasy films such as "12 Monkeys," "Brazil," and "Time Bandits," Terry Gilliam was a member of Monty Python, alongside Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin. The legendary comedy troupe helped Gilliam bridge the worlds of film and television when he and Jones co-directed "Monty Python and the Holy Grail."

In Hollywood, there was no such thing as a "blockbuster" until the film "Jaws." Released in the summer of 1975, the shark-infested movie was an international sensation, adding fuel to the fire of Steven Spielberg’s then-burgeoning career. Over the next two decades, the filmmaker grew into a legend, with many of his films defining cinema in the 1980s and '90s.

The Tramp is arguably the most famous character of the silent film era. Created and portrayed by actor-director Charlie Chaplin, the character debuted in a short film titled "Kid Auto Races at Venice" in 1914, and went on to appear in more than a dozen of Chaplin's short films in that year alone. Chaplin continued to play the role for more than a decade, and in the 1920s and '30s, he created film classics including "The Gold Rush," "City Lights," and "Modern Times" — all starring the Tramp.

Famous for films such as 1956’s "The Searchers" and 1939’s "Stagecoach"( the latter of which transformed lead actor John Wayne into a major star), director John Ford is synonymous with the American Western movie. Although he ventured beyond the genre, especially later in his career, many of his greatest stories are about lawmen and outlaws in the Old West.

Although "Master of Suspense" Alfred Hitchcock was most famous for his work behind the camera, he did plenty in front of it, too. The British filmmaker made appearances in all of his Hollywood-era films, but most of them were blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameos. In fact, missing Hitchcock’s recognizable face is easy to do, as audiences are usually too enthralled by what else was happening in his films. Among his most famous movies are "Rear Window," "North by Northwest," "Vertigo," and "Psycho."

Five years after the success of “The Godfather Part II,” Francis Ford Coppola returned with a war film that also proved to be a classic: “Apocalypse Now,” starring Marlon Brando and Martin Sheen.

The first film that director Frank Capra and actor Jimmy Stewart ever did together was “You Can’t Take It With You,” in 1938. The following year, they got back together for “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” and in 1946, they collaborated on the holiday classic “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

All scenes in director Peter Jackson’s “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy were shot on location in New Zealand, his home country. The final film of the trilogy, “The Return of the King,” won nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director.

Francis Ford Coppola directed the first “Godfather” film in 1972, based on a novel by Mario Puzo. Both of the first two films in the trilogy won Oscars for Best Picture, and “The Godfather Part II” was the first sequel to ever win the award.

At just 25 years old, Orson Welles wrote, directed, and starred in “Citizen Kane,” his first feature film. The American Film Institute named “Citizen Kane” the best film of all time in lists published in 1998 and 2007.