the Greatest Jewish Film Directors
You know the Jews in Hollywood are numerous...However it really is surprising how many great movie directors are/were Jewish. The following list I "culled" from IMDb & Wiki, etc. includes some famous movie stars and writers who also dabbled as directors occasionally.
Please add any other "Worthy" Jewish Directors you know of...
* Woody Allen
Director, Annie Hall, Sleeper
Woody Allen was born on December 1, 1935 in Brooklyn, New York, to Nettie (Cherrie), a bookkeeper, and Martin Konigsberg, a waiter and jewelry engraver. His father was of Russian Jewish and Lithuanian Jewish descent. Woody first gained fame as a stand-up comic before moving into acting & directing.
* Sidney Lumet
Director, 12 Angry Men, Dog Day Afternoon, The Pawn Broker
Sidney Lumet was a master of cinema, best known for his technical knowledge and his skill at getting first-rate performances from his actors -- and for shooting most of his films in his beloved New York. He made over 40 movies, often complex and emotional, but seldom overly sentimental. Although his politics were somewhat left-leaning and he often treated socially relevant themes in his films.
* Billy Wilder
Writer, Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, Stalag 17
Originally planning to become a lawyer, Billy Wilder abandoned that career in favor of working as a reporter for a Viennese newspaper, using this experience to move to Berlin, where he worked for the city's largest tabloid. He broke into films as a screenwriter in 1929, and wrote scripts for many German films until Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933.
* Stanley Kubrick
Director, A Clockwork Orange, 2001, Dr. Strangelove
Stanley Kubrick was born in New York, and was considered intelligent despite poor grades at school. Hoping that a change of scenery would produce better academic performance, Kubrick's father Jack (a physician) sent him in 1940 to Pasadena, California, to stay with his uncle.
* Michael Curtiz
Director, Casablanca, Robin Hood, Yankee Doodle Dandy
American director of Hungarian origin, Oscar-winner. He received his diploma from the School for Dramatic Arts in 1906. He then went to live in Pécs, then Szeged. He made his first film in 1912. The next year he went on a study tour to Denmark to study the newest achievements of the new art in the studios of the then flourishing Nordisk company.
* Milos Forman
Director, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Hair, Ragtime
Milos Forman was born Jan Tomas Forman in Caslav, Czechoslovakia, to Anna (Svabova), who ran a summer hotel, and Rudolf Forman, a professor. During World War II, his parents were taken away by the Nazis, after being accused of participating in the underground resistance. His father died in Buchenwald and his mother died in Auschwitz.
* Ernst Lubitsch
Director, To Be or Not to Be, Ninotchka
From Ernst Lubitsch's experiences in Sophien Gymnasium (high school) theater, he decided to leave school at the age of 16 and pursue a career on the stage. He had to compromise with his father and keep the account books for the family tailor business while he acted in cabarets and music halls at night.
* Fritz Lang
Director, M
Fritz Lang was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1890. His father managed a construction company. His mother, Pauline Schlesinger, was Jewish but converted to Catholicism when Lang was ten.
* Steven Spielberg
Director, Saving Private Ryan, Indiana Jones, Jaws, Schindler's List, Close Encounters
Undoubtedly one of the most influential film personalities in the history of film, Steven Spielberg is perhaps Hollywood's best known director and one of the wealthiest filmmakers in the world. Spielberg has countless big-grossing, critically acclaimed credits to his name, as producer, director and writer.
* Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Director, All About Eve, Cleopatra
Born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, on February 11, 1909, Joseph Leo Mankiewicz first worked for the movies as a translator of intertitles, employed by Paramount in Berlin, the UFA's American distributor at the time (1928). He became a dialogist, then a screenwriter on numerous Paramount productions in Hollywood.
* Bob Rafelson
Director, Five Easy Pieces, The Postman Always Rings Twice
Bob Rafelson, is an American film director, writer and producer. He is regarded as one of the founders of the New Hollywood
movement in the 1970s.
* Joel & Ethan Coen
Directors, No Country for Old Men, Fargo, Oh Brother, The Big Lebowski
The Coen Brothers (Joel & Ethan), Produced 18 Films from 1984 thru 2013.
* Jules Dassin
Director, Rififi
Jules Dassin was an Academy Award-nominated director, screenwriter and actor best known for his films Rififi, Never on Sunday, and Topkapi. He was born Julius Samuel Dassin on 18 December 1911, in Middletown, Connecticut, USA. He was one of eight children of Russian-Jewish immigrants.
* Roman Polanski
Director, The Pianist, China Town, Rosemary's Baby
Roman Polanski is a Polish film director, producer, writer and actor. Having made films in Poland, Britain, France and the USA, he is considered one of the few truly international filmmakers. Roman Polanski was born in Paris in 1933. His parents returned to Poland from France in 1936, three years before World War II began.
* David Cronenberg
Director, The Fly, Scanners, Eastern Promises
David Cronenberg, also known as the King of Venereal Horror or the Baron of Blood, was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in 1943. His father was a journalist, and his mother was a piano player.
* Otto Preminger
Director, Anatomy of a Murder, Exodus
Otto Ludwig Preminger was born in Wiznitz, Bukovina, Austria-Hungary. His father was a prosecutor, and Otto originally intended to follow his father into a law career; however, he fell in love with the theater and became a stage director. He directed his first film in 1931, and came to the US in 1936 to direct on the Broadway stage.
* Sam Raimi
Writer, Spider-Man 3, Darkman, Oz,
Highly inventive U.S. film director/producer/writer/actor Sam Raimi first came to the attention of film fans with the savage, yet darkly humorous, low-budget horror film, The Evil Dead. From his childhood, Raimi was a fan of the cinema and, before he was ten-years-old, he was out making movies with an 8mm camera.
* Arthur Penn
Director, Bonnie and Clyde, The Miracle Worker
He was an American director and producer of film, television and theater. Penn directed critically acclaimed films throughout the 1960s such as the drama The Chase (1966), Alice's Restaurant (1969). He also got attention for his revisionist Western Little Big Man (1970).
* George Cukor
Director, My Fair Lady, Gaslight, A Star is Born
He was born on July 7, 1899 in New York City, New York, USA as George Dewey Cukor. He is known for his work on My Fair Lady (1964), The Philadelphia Story (1940) and Adam's Rib (1949).
* William Wyler
Director, Ben-Hur, Best Years of Our Lives
William Wyler was an American filmmaker who, at the time of his death in 1981, was considered by his peers as second only to John Ford as a master craftsman of cinema. The winner of three Best Director Academy Awards, second again only to Ford's four.
* Michael Mann
Director, Heat, Last of the Mohican's
A student of London's International Film School, Michael Mann began his career in the late 70s, writing for TV shows like Starsky and Hutch. He directed his first film, the award-winning prison drama The Jericho Mile, in 1979. He followed that in 1981 with his first theatrical release, Thief starring James Caan as a safe-cracker who falls under the spell of the mob.
* Rob Reiner
Director, This Is Spinal Tap, When Harry met Sally
Robert Reiner was born to Emmy-Winning actor, comedian, writer, and producer Carl Reiner, and mother, Estelle Reiner. Robert as a child often looked up to his father Carl as his inspiration and role-model.
* Darren Aronofsky
Director, Requiem for a Dream, Black Swan
Darren Aronofsky was born February 12, 1969, in Brooklyn, New York. Growing up, Darren was always artistic: he loved classic movies and, as a teenager, he even spent time doing graffiti art. After high school, Darren went to Harvard University to study film (both live-action and animation).
* Sam Mendes
Director, American Beauty, Sky Fall
Samuel Alexander Mendes was born on August 1, 1965 in Reading, England, UK to parents James Peter Mendes, a retired university lecturer, and Valerie Helene Mendes, an author who writes children's books.
* Mel Brooks
Director, The Producers, The 12 Chairs, Blazing Saddles
Melvin James Kaminsky was born on June 28th, 1926 in Brooklyn, New York, to Russian Jewish immigrants, Kate and James Kaminsky. His father died when Mel was twelve years old, and he has said that his angry humor stems from that event. He was a "Tummler" in the Catskills as a teen, later after the war he went to work as a writer on the Sid Caesar Show in early TV.
* Josef von Sternberg
Director, The Blue Angel
Josef von Sternberg split his childhood between Vienna and New York City. His father, a former soldier in the Austro-Hungarian army, could not support his family in either city; Sternberg remembered him only as "an enormously strong man who often used his strength on me."
* Paul Newman
Actor/Director, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Rachel Rachel
Screen legend, superstar, and the man with the most famous blue eyes in movie history, Paul Leonard Newman was born in January 1925, in Cleveland, Ohio, the second son of Theresa (Fetsko) and Arthur Sigmund Newman. Paul's father was Jewish, the son of immigrants from Poland and Hungary.
* Oliver Stone
Director, Platoon, JFK, Wall Street, Scarface
His father was non-practicing Jewish, and his French-born mother was a non-practicing Roman Catholic. Oliver Stone has become known as a master of controversial subjects and a legendary film maker. His films are filled with a variety of film angles and styles, he pushes his actors to give Oscar-worthy performances, and despite his failures, has always returned to success.
* Bryan Singer
Producer, The Usual Suspects, X-Men, Superman Returns
Singer is an American film and television director, film and television producer, story writer, screenwriter, and actor. He is the founder of Bad Hat Harry Productions and he has produced or co-produced almost all of the films he has directed.
* J.J. Abrams
Director, Lost, Star Trek, Star Wars, Mission Impossible
Jeffrey Jacob "J. J." Abrams (born June 27, 1966) is an American director, producer, writer, author and composer, best known for his work in the genres of action, drama, and science fiction.
* Stanley Donen
Director, Singin' in the Rain
Since he was a child, Stanley Donen attended dance classes and debuted on Broadway at age 17. With the help of the producer Arthur Freed and the actor Gene Kelly he got the chance to direct the musicals On the Town, Singin' in the Rain, and Love Is Better Than Ever which revolutionized the genre.
* Ivan Reitman
Director, Draft Day, Twins, Stripes, Ghostbusters
Reitman was born in Komárno, Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia), the son of Klara and Ladislav "Leslie" Reitman. Reitman's parents were Jewish; his mother survived the Auschwitz concentration camp and his father was an underground resistance fighter.
* Jason Reitman
Director, Up in the Air, Juno, Thank You for Smoking
Reitman was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, the son of Geneviève Robert, an actress, and comedy director Ivan Reitman.
* Edward Zwick
Director, Defiance, Glory, The Siege
Edward M. Zwick is an American filmmaker and film producer noted for his films about social and racial issues.
* Don Siegel
Director, Dirty Harry, Madigan, The Beguiled
Don Siegel was educated at Cambridge University, England. In Hollywood from the mid-'30s, he began his career as an editor and second unit director. In 1945 he directed two shorts (Hitler Lives and Star in the Night) which both won Academy Awards. His first feature as a director was 1946's The Verdict.
* Fred Zinnemann
Director, High Noon, From Here to Eternity, The Sundowners
Initially grew up wanting to be a violinist, but while at the University of Vienna decided to study law. While doing so, he became increasingly interested in American film and decided that was what he wanted to do. He became involved in European film making for a short time before going to America to study film.
* Mike Nichols
Director, Catch 22, The Graduate
Mike Nichols was born in Berlin during the Nazi era...when his family got to N.Y. Mikhail Igor Peschkowsky couldn't speak a word of English. Later.....He, along with the other members of the "Compass Players" including Elaine May, Paul Sills, Byrne Piven, Joyce Hiller Piven and Edward Asner helped start the famed "Second City Improv" company. Mike went from Stand-up with Elaine May into directing.
* Barry Levinson
Producer, Sleepers, Rain Man, Diner, Avalon, Bugsy
Barry Levinson was born in Baltimore, Maryland, to Violet (Krichinsky) and Irvin Levinson, who worked in furniture and appliance. He is of Russian Jewish descent.
* Lewis Milestone
Director, All Quiet on the Western Front
Lewis Milestone, a clothing manufacturer's son, was born in Bessarabia (now Moldova), raised in Odessa (Ukraine) and educated in Belgium and Berlin (where he studied engineering). He was fluent in both German and Russian and had an affinity for the theatre from an early age.
* John Frankenheimer
Director, Ronin, Birdman of Alcatraz, The Manchurian Candidate.
Born in New York and raised in Queens, John Frankenheimer decided he wanted to be an actor but then he applied for and was accepted in the Motion Picture Squadron of the Air Force where he realized his natural talent to handle a camera.
* Samuel Fuller
Director, The Big Red One, I Shot Jesse James
At age 17, Samuel Fuller was the youngest reporter ever to be in charge of the events section of the New York Journal. After having participated in the European battle theater in World War II, he directed some minor action productions for which he mostly wrote the scripts himself and which he also produced.
* William Friedkin
Director, The Exorcist, The French Connection, Boy's in the Band. Young Will became infatuated with Orson Welles after seeing Citizen Kane. He's an American film director, producer and screenwriter best known for directing The French Connection in 1971 and The Exorcist in 1973; for the former, he won the Academy Award for Best Director.
* Stanley Kramer
Director/Producer, Judgment at Nuremberg, Inherit the Wind, Ship of Fools, High Noon. On the Beach, The Caine Mutiny
Stanley Earl Kramer was an American film director and producer, responsible for making many of Hollywood's most famous "message films". As an independent producer and director, he brought attention to topical social issues that most studios avoided.
* Marcel Ophüls
Director, The Sorrow and the Pity
Marcel Ophuls is an Oscar-winning documentary film maker and former actor, best known for his films The Sorrow and the Pity and Hôtel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie.
* Barry Sonnenfeld
Director, Men in Black, Get Shorty
Barry Sonnenfeld was born and raised in New York City. He graduated from New York University of Film School in 1978. After refining his craft on several hard-core pornographic films, he started work as director of photography on the Oscar-nominated In Our Water. Then Joel Coen and Ethan Coen hired him for Blood Simple.
* Alan J. Pakula
Producer, The Pelican Brief, To Kill a Mockingbird, Sophie's Choice, All the President's Men.
Alan Jay Pakula was an American film director, writer and producer. He was nominated for three Academy Awards: Best Picture for To Kill a Mockingbird, Best Director for All the President's Men and Best Adapted Screenplay for Sophie's Choice.
* Anatole Litvak
Director, The Snake Pit, Sorry Wrong Number, Anastasia, Confession of a Nazi Spy
The distinguished film director Anatole Litvak was born in the Ukrainian city of Kiev, the son of Jewish parents. His very first job was as a stage hand, and in 1915 he became an actor, performing at a little-known experimental theater in St. Petersburg, Russia. As a teenager he witnessed the 1917 Russian Revolution.
* Jerry Lewis
Actor/Director, The Nutty Professor
Jerry Lewis (born March 16, 1926) is an American comedian, actor, singer, film producer, screenwriter and film director. He is known for his slapstick humor in film, television, stage and radio. He was originally paired up with Dean Martin in 1946, forming the famed comedy team of Martin and Lewis.
* David Mamet
Writer/Director, Glengarry Glen Ross, Homicide, The Untouchables,
David Alan Mamet is an American playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and film director. As a playwright, Mamet has won a Pulitzer Prize and received Tony nominations for Glengarry Glen Ross and Speed-the-Plow.
* Jerry Schatzberg
Director, Scarecrow, Panic in Needle Park
Before going on to direct films in the 1970s, Jerry Schatzberg had already established a career as a professional photographer. His work appeared in many magazines including 'Vogue' and 'McCall's'.
* John Landis
Director, The Blues Brothers, The Twilight Zone
John Landis began his career in the mail room of 20th Century-Fox. A high-school dropout, 18-year-old Landis made his way to Yugoslavia to work as a production assistant on Kelly's Heroes. Remaining in Europe, Landis found work as an actor, extra and stuntman in many of the Spanish/Italian "spaghetti" westerns.
* John Schlesinger
Director, Midnight Cowboy, Darling, Marathon Man
Oscar-winning director John Schlesinger, who was born in London, on February 16, 1926, was the eldest child in a solidly middle-class Jewish family. Berbard Schlesinger, his father, was a pediatrician, and his mother, Winifred, was a musician.
* Joel Schumacher
Director, The Phantom of the Opera, Batman, Falling Down
Joel T. Schumacher is an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. Some notable films he has directed include The Incredible Shrinking Woman, St. Elmo's Fire, The Lost Boys, Cousins, Falling Down.
* Judd Apatow
Producer/Writer/Director/Actor, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Anchorman
Judd Apatow is an American producer, director, comedian, actor, and screenwriter. He is best known for his work in comedy films, and is the founder of Apatow Productions.
* Nancy Meyers
Writer, The Holiday, Something's Gotta Give, Father of the Bride.
Nancy Jane Meyers is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. She is the writer, producer and director of several big-screen successes, including The Parent Trap, Something's Gotta Give, The Holiday, and It's Complicated.
* Michel Hazanavicius
Director, The Artist
Michel Hazanavicius was born and raised in Paris, France. His grandparents were originally from Lithuania, but relocated to France in the 1920s.
* Peter Bogdanovich
Actor, The Last Picture Show, Mask, Daisy Miller
After spending most of his teens studying acting with the legendary Stella Adler, and working as an actor in live TV and various theaters around the country, including the New York and the American Shakespeare Festivals, Peter Bogdanovich at age 20 began directing plays Off-Broadway and in N.Y. summer theater.
* Ralph Bakshi
Director, The Lord of the Rings
Ralph Bakshi worked his way up from Brooklyn and became an animation legend. Born on October 29, 1938, in Haifa, Bakshi grew up in Brownsville after his family came to New York to escape World War II.
* Philip Kaufman
Writer, Raiders of the Lost Ark
Director/ Screenwriter Philip Kaufman was born in Chicago, Illinois. He was the screenwriter for The Outlaw Josey Wales and was to direct it but was replaced as director by Clint Eastwood...
* Richard Brooks,
Writer, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Elmer Gantry
Richard Brooks was an Academy Award-winning film writer who also earned six Oscar nominations and achieved success as a film director and producer. He was born Ruben Sax on May 18, 1912, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His parents were Russian-Jewish immigrants.
* Sacha Baron Cohen
Actor, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
British actor and comedian Sacha Baron Cohen was born in Hammersmith, London. He is the son of Daniella (Weiser), a movement instructor, and Gerald Baron Cohen, a clothing store owner. His father, born in Wales and raised in England, is of Eastern European Jewish descent, while his mother was born in Israel.
* Sydney Pollack
Director, Tootsie, 3 Days of the Condor, A Civil Action
Sydney Pollack was an Academy Award-winning director, producer, actor, writer and public figure, who directed and produced over 40 films. He was born on July 1, 1934, in Lafayette, Indiana, USA, to a family of Russian-Jewish immigrants.
* Lawrence Kasdan
Director, Silverado, The Big Chill, Body Heat, Wyatt Earp
Lawrence Edward Kasdan is an American screenwriter, director and producer. He is best known as co-writer of the films The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Return of the Jedi.
* Jeremy Kagan
Director, The Journey of Natty Gann
Jeremy Kagan is a director/writer/producer of feature films and television. His credits include the box-office hits Heroes,
The Big Fix and The Chosen.
* Claude Lanzmann
Self, Shoah, Last of the UnJust
Claude Lanzmann is a French filmmaker known for the Holocaust documentary film Shoah.
* Paul Mazursky
Director, Down and Out in Beverly Hills, An Unmarried Woman, Moscow on the Hudson, Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice
Irwin "Paul" Mazursky was an American film director, screenwriter, and actor. Known for his dramatic comedies that often dealt with modern social issues, he was nominated for five Academy Awards. He appeared in The Blackboard Jungle as a Teen.
* Robert Rossen
Director/Writer, The Hustler, Body & Soul, All the King's Men, The Sea Wolf, A Walk in the Sun.
Robert Rossen was an American screenwriter, film director, and producer whose film career spanned almost three decades.
* Moshé Mizrahi
Director, Every Time We Say Goodbye
Moshé Mizrahi is an Israeli film director. He has directed 14 films in both Israel and France. Three of his films were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, I Love You Rosa,
* Larry Cohen
Writer, Phone Booth, I the Jury
Larry Cohen was born July 15, 1941, in Kingston, New York, a small town north of New York City. He eventually majored in film at the historic City College of New York.
* Irvin Kershner
Director, Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back
Irvin Kershner was born on April 29, 1923 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. A graduate of the University of Southern California film school, Kershner began his career in 1950, producing documentaries for the United States Information Service in the Middle East.
* Stuart Rosenberg
Director, Cool Hand Luke, Voyage of the Damned
Stuart Rosenberg was an American film and television director whose notable works included the movies Cool Hand Luke, Voyage of the Damned, The Amityville Horror, and The Pope of Greenwich Village. He was noted for his work with actor Paul Newman.
* Robert Siodmak
Director, The Killers, Criss-Cross, Cry of the City
The director Robert Siodmak was a masterful film maker who successfully blended the techniques of German Expressionism with contemporary styles of American film, particularly film noir, in the process creating a handful of moody, sometimes chilling, and always memorable motion pictures.
* Elliot Silverstein
Director, Cat Ballou, A Man Called Horse
Elliot Silverstein was the director of six feature films in the mid-twentieth century. The most famous of these by far is Cat Ballou, a comedy-western starring Jane Fonda.
* Daniel Mann
Director, Butterfield 8, The Rose tattoo
Stage, television and film director Daniel Mann was born Daniel Chugerman on August 8, 1912, in Brooklyn, NY. He was a child performer and attended the New York's Professional Children's School. He studied with renowned acting teacher Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse.
* Anthony Mann
Director, El Cid, the Glenn Miller Story
Anthony Mann was an American actor and film director, most notably of films noir and Westerns. As a director, he often collaborated with the cinematographer John Alton and with actor James Stewart in his Westerns.
* Kirk Douglas
Actor/Director, Spartacus
Cleft-chinned, steely-eyed and virile star of international cinema who rose from being "the ragman's son" (the name of his best-selling 1988 autobiography) to become a bona fide superstar, Kirk Douglas, also known as Issur Danielovitch Demsky, was born in Amsterdam, New York, in 1916. His parents, Bryna (Sanglel) and Herschel Danielovitch...
* Tony Kaye
Director, American History X
Tony Kaye was born in London, United Kingdom. He has made several well-known music videos, including the video for "Runaway Train" by Soul Asylum, which won a Grammy Award, "Dani California" by Red Hot Chili Peppers, "What God Wants" by Roger Waters, and "Help Me" and "God's Gonna Cut You Down" by Johnny Cash...
* Barbra Streisand
Actress/Director, Yentl
Barbra Streisand is an American singer, actress, director and producer and one of the most successful personalities in show business. She is the only person ever to receive all of the following: Oscar, Tony, Emmy, Grammy, Golden Globe, Cable Ace, National Endowment for the Arts, and Peabody awards.
* Abraham Polonsky
Director, Force of Evil, Body & Soul, Romance of a Horsethief.
Writer-director Abraham Lincoln Polonsky, one of the most prominent victims of the Hollywood blacklisting of communists and social progressives in the post-World War II period, was born on December 5, 1910, in New York, New York. An unreconstructed Marxist,
Polonsky never hid his membership in the Communist Party.
