The two directors with the most Oscars wins
Decades of cinematic magic have produced some of the finest filmmakers ever to grace Hollywood’s silver screen. From the magic of American directors such as Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola and Stanley Kubrick to such foreign masters as Akira Kurosawa, Ingmar Bergman and Federico Fellini, the Academy Awards have long sorted the best from the rest.
Of course, the Oscars aren’t the be-all and end-all of cinematic success and don’t define the legacy of any given individual, with the likes of Fellini and Bergman having never won an Academy Award throughout their celebrated careers. Yet, particularly for American filmmakers, the annual awards show does legitimise the artistic talents of directors, actors and other cinematic innovators.
When it comes to the directors, two have won more Oscars than anyone else in their role, with both being masters of the American industry.
The first is Billy Wilder, an Austrian-American film director, writer, and producer known for making some of Hollywood’s most iconic movies. Collecting 21 Academy Award nominations across his three-decade-long career, Wilder walked away with six Oscar gongs. His first Academy gold came in 1945 with the release of The Lost Weekend, starring Ray Milland and Jane Wyman, which won him statuettes for ‘Best Director’ and ‘Best Screenplay’.
Later, he won ‘Best Screenplay’ for Sunset Boulevard in 1951 before earning three Oscars for ‘Best Director’, ‘Best Picture’, and ‘Best Original Screenplay’ in 1960 for The Apartment, starring Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine.
The other record-holder is the master of the western genre, John Ford, who made several movies with the great John Wayne throughout his career. Directing over 140 movies, Ford also earned six Oscars for his contributions to cinema, winning ‘Best Director’ for 1935’s The Informer, 1940’s The Grapes of Wrath, 1941’s How Green Was My Valley and 1952’s The Quiet Man.
Despite his fame in the industry, he would only win two awards for ‘Best Picture’, collecting Oscars for The Quiet Man and How Green Was My Valley. His 1956 film The Searchers, which is today seen as his greatest movie, received no nominations at all, with this being partly due to the abundance of movie ‘epics’ released in the very same year, with The King and I, The Ten Commandments and Around the World in Eighty Days each being given the nod instead.
Wilder and Ford are both considered to be two of the greatest American filmmakers ever to grace Hollywood. Check out the trailer for Wilder’s The Apartment below.
