Every actor dreams of winning an Academy Award someday. Winning one, however, is not easy. It takes a lot of luck, a great performance, and unfortunately, a lot of campaigning. Then again, one could always try to be in a film helmed by a director the Academy greatly admires. If the part is juicy enough, you might just get those accolades you’ve been searching for. So which directors should you work with if you want that elusive naked golden man on your mantle? The directors below should give you an idea. They’re the ones who have directed the most Oscar-nominated performances throughout their careers. Many of them even dominate the leaderboards for winning performances, too.
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8 Mike Nichols
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Mike Nichols directed 18 actors to Oscar nominations. However, only two have won, and both were for the same film: Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? Elizabeth Taylor won her second Best Actress Oscar for it and Sandy Dennis won Best Supporting Actress for it. The film was nominated for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor, but lost both. Two of Nichols’ other films received three acting nominations: The Graduate (for Dustin Hoffman, Anne Bancroft, and Katharine Ross) and Working Girl (for Melanie Griffith, Sigourney Weaver, and Joan Cusack). Nichols passed away in 2014, with the last Oscar-nominated performance he directed being Philip Seymour Hoffman in Charlie Wilson’s War. Hoffman lost to Javier Bardem’s iconic performance in No Country For Old Men.
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
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7 George Stevens
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Like Mike Nichols, George Stevens also has directed 18 actors to nominations with only two wins. Charles Coburn won Best Supporting Actor for 1943’s The More The Merrier and Shelley Winters won the first of her two awards for 1959’s The Diary of Anne Frank. Stevens directed 1948’s I Remember Mama, which earned four acting nominations, including two for Best Supporting Actress. He also directed 1956’s Giant, which earned three acting nominations and won Stevens his second Best Director statue.
6 Sidney Lumet
ThinkFilm
Like Nichols and Stevens, Sidney Lumet has directed 18 nominees. However, he’s directed four winning performances, three of which came for the same film: 1976’s masterpiece, Network, which won every acting award besides Best Supporting Actor. Network is also the film of Lumet’s with the most acting nominations, at five. The only other acting win for a Sidney Lumet film comes for Ingrid Bergman in Murder On The Orient Express. The last Oscar-nominated performance Lumet directed was River Phoenix in Running on Empty. Phoenix lost to Kevin Kline’s brilliant performance in A Fish Called Wanda.
5 Fred Zinnemann
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Fred Zinnemann has directed 20 Oscar-nominated performances, six of which won. Two of Zinnemann’s films won both Supporting categories: From Here To Eternity (which won Zinnemann Best Director and won Best Picture), and 1977’s Julia, which won Jason Robards the second of his back-to-back Oscars. Zinnemann’s two other wins both came in the Best Actor category. He directed Gary Cooper’s incredible winning performance for High Noon and directed Paul Scofield in his win for A Man For All Seasons, which won Zinnemann his second Best Director statue and Best Picture as well.
4 George Cukor
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With 21 nominated performances and five wins, George Cukor takes fourth place. The five winning performances for Cukor films are James Stewart for The Philadelphia Story, Ingrid Bergman for Gaslight, Ronald Colman for A Double Life (one of the more underrated wins the Best Actor category), Judy Holliday for Born Yesterday (who triumphed over both Gloria Swanson and Bette Davis for Sunset Boulevard and All About Eve, respectively), and Rex Harrison for My Fair Lady. Cukor also directed Judy Garland in 1954’s A Star Is Born, which many at the time believed would win Garland her Best Actress Oscar, but Grace Kelly triumphed for The Country Girl instead.
3 Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese the Director
With 24 nominated performances, Martin Scorsese takes the bronze for the director with the most Oscar-nominated performances. One more nominated actor will give him second place outright. While actors in Scorsese films have no trouble getting nominated, winning is another story. As of 2022, he’s only directed five winning performances: Ellen Burstyn for Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, Robert De Niro for Raging Bull, Paul Newman for The Color Of Money, Joe Pesci for Goodfellas, and Cate Blanchett for The Aviator. Scorsese is also the only still-living director on this list. He’ll turn 80 years young on November 17th.
2 Elia Kazan
Like Scorsese, Elia Kazan has also directed 24 actors to Oscar nominations. Unlike Scorsese, Kazan’s win rate is much better, with nine actors winning for performances in his films, the second-highest total of any director. Half of Kazan’s wins came for two films: On The Waterfront, which won Marlon Brando and Eva Marie Saint their Oscars, and A Streetcar Named Desire, which won every acting award except Best Actor (Humphrey Bogart won over Marlon Brando for The African Queen that year.) The last Oscar-nominated performance directed by Kazan was Natalie Wood for 1961’s Splendor In The Grass.
1 William Wyler
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William Wyler is the undisputed champion of getting actors Oscar nominations, and it’s not close. While Elia Kazan and Martin Scorsese are tied for second with 24 nominated performances, Wyler blows them out of the water with a whopping 36 nominated performances. Wyler also leads all directors in winning performances, with 14 actors winning for performances in his films. Wyler has three Oscars for directing, for the films Mrs. Miniver, The Best Years Of Our Lives, and Ben-Hur. All three films took home two acting awards. Mrs. Miniver won Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress while The Best Years Of Our Lives and Ben-Hur won Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor. Other notable winning performances directed by Wyler include Audrey Hepburn for Roman Holiday, Olivia de Havilland for The Heiress, and Barbra Streisand for Funny Girl, who tied for the win with Katharine Hepburn in The Lion In Winter.
