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8 Directors with the Most Oscar Nominations

Here is a list at some of the best movie directors of all time according to the Academy Awards

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Over the years, the Oscars have recognized some of the best directors in the motion picture industry. They have awarded some directors who were geniuses and overlooked a few that should have won.

John Ford has won more Oscars for Best Director than any other person, yet he is not even on this list as one of the directors to be nominated the most. He won four out of five Best Director nominations.

Who are the most nominated people for Best Director in the history of Academy Awards. Here is the list of people who have received six or more nominations.

8. Frank Capra (6 Oscar nominations for Best Director)

Frank Capra won three of his six nominations. His first win was in 1935 for It Happened One Night. Then, just two years later, he won in 1937 for Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. Two years after that he won for You Can’t Take It with You.

The 1930s was Capra’s decade with five of his Oscar nominations happening then. His three Oscar wins tie him for the second most Best Director Oscars in the history of the Academy Awards.

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7. Woody Allen (7 Oscar nominations for Best Director)

Woody Allen won his only Academy Award the first time her was nominated. It was for the movie Annie Hall in 1978. Annie Hall would win Best Picture that year. It beat out movies like Star Wars and Close Encounters of a Third Kind.

Allen was nominated for six other movies, however. Those movies were Interiors, Broadway Danny Rose, Hannah and Her Sisters, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Bullets Over Broadway, and his most recent nomination in 2011, Midnight in Paris.

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6. David Lean (7 Oscar nominations for Best Director)

David Lean is the second man on this list to have been nominated seven times for Best Director. Lean won two of his seven Best Director nominations.

His wins were for The Bridge on the River Kwai in 1958 and Lawrence of Arabia in 1963.

His other nominations were for Brief Encounter, Great Expectations, Summertime, Doctor Zhivago, and A Passage to India.

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5. Fred Zinnemann (7 Oscar nominations for Best Director)

Like Woody Allend and David Lean, Fred Ninnemann was nominated seven times for Best Director. He won two out of his seven Academy Award nominations for Best Director.

Zinnemann won for directing From Here to Eternity in 1954 and A Man for All Seasons in 1967. His other five Best Directing nominations were for High Noon, The Search, The Nun’s Story, The Sundowners, and Julia.

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4. Billy Wilder (8 Oscar nominations for Best Director)

Billy Wilder was nominated eight times by the Academy Awards for Best Director.

His first directing nomination was in 1945 for Double Indemnity. He would win the next year in 1946 for The Lost Weekend.

In 1950 he was nominated but did not win for Sunset Boulevard. During that decade he would be nominated without winning four more times for Stalag 17, Sabrina, Witness for the Prosecution, and Some Like It Hot.

Finally, in 1961, he would win his second Academy Award for Best Director for the movie The Apartment.

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3. Steven Spielberg (9 Oscar nominations for Best Director)

Steven Spielberg has won two Academy Awards for Best Directing but has been nominated an incredible nine times.

His first nomination was for Close Encounters of the Third Kind in 1978. He lost that nomination to Woody Allen directing Anne Hall.

He was nominated but did not win for Raiders of the Lost Ark and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial before winning his first directing Oscar for Schindler’s List in 1994.

He would win Best Director again in 1999 for Saving Private Ryan.

His other four nominations were for Munich, Lincoln, West Side Story, and The Fabelmans.

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2. Martin Scorsese (10 Oscar nominations for Best Director)

Martin Scorsese has been nominated a whooping ten times for a Best Director Oscar but has only won one.

His sole directing Academy Award came in 2007 for The Departed.

His other nine nominations include Raging Bull, The Last Temptation of Christ, Goodfellas, Gangs of New York, The Aviator, Hugo, The Wolf of Wall Street, The Irishman, and Killers of the Flower Moon.

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1. William Wyler (12 Oscar nominations for Best Director

William Wyler had the most Oscar nominations for Best Director in the history of the Academy Awards. Of his twelve nominations, he won three of them. This ties him for second for the most Best Director wins.

He was first nominated for Best Directing at the 9th Academy Awards in 1937 for Dodsworth. After that, he would be nominated for Wuthering Heights, The Letter, and The Little Foxes before finally winning in 1943 for Mrs. Miniver.

He would win again in 1947 for The Best Years of Our Lives.

He would be then be nominated for The Heiress, Detective Story, Roman Holiday, and Friendly Persuasion. In 1960, he won his third and final directing Oscar for Ben-Hur.

Finally in 1966, he received his twelfth Best Director nomination for The Collector, twenty-nine years after his first nomination.

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If you are curious, here is a list of directors with four and five Oscar nominations:

Four Oscar Nominations Paul Thomas AndersonFrancis Ford Coppola Michael Curtiz Clint Eastwood Federico Fellini Stanley Kubrick Frank Lloyd Sidney Lumet Joseph L. Mankiewicz Mike Nichols Peter Weir

Five Oscar Nominations Robert Altman Clarence Brown George Cukor John Ford Alfred Hitchcock John Huston Elia Kazan George Stevens King Vidor

Here is the list of people with multiple actual wins: John Ford (4 wins) Frank Capra (3 wins) William Wyler (3 wins) Frank Borzage (2 wins) Alfonso Cuarón(2 wins) Clint Eastwood (2 wins) Miloš Forman (2 wins) Alejandro G. Iñárritu (2 wins) Elia Kazan (2 wins) David Lean (2 wins) Ang Lee (2 wins) Frank Lloyd (2 wins) Joseph L. Mankiewicz (2 wins) Leo McCarey (2 wins) Lewis Milestone (2 wins) Steven Spielberg (2 wins) George Stevens (2 wins) Oliver Stone (2 wins) Billy Wilder (2 wins) Robert Wise (2 wins) Fred Zinnemann (2 wins)

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Who are your favorite directors? Are they on this list? Feel free to add your thoughts in the comments.

The Oscars can be a fun time for movie lovers.

Sometimes things go as expected, while other times, the results can be surprising. Here is a list I wrote about some really good movies that did not win. 10 Best Movies to Lose at the Oscars

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