Golden Globe Award for Best Director

The Golden Globe Award for Best Director – Motion Picture is a Golden Globe Award that has been presented annually by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, an organization composed of journalists who cover the United States film industry for publications based outside North America, since 1943.

Having won all four of his nominations, Elia Kazan has been honored most often in this category.

Clint Eastwood, Miloš Forman, David Lean, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and Oliver Stone tie for second place with three wins each.

Barbra Streisand, Chloé Zhao and Jane Campion are the only women to have won the award.

Receiving the award in 1984 for Yentl, Barbra Streisand became the first woman to win the Golden Globe for Best Director.

Henry King was the first recipient of this award for The Song of Bernadette (1943)
Billy Wilder won twice for The Lost Weekend (1945) and Sunset Boulevard (1950)
Elia Kazan won four times for Gentleman's Agreement (1947), On the Waterfront (1954), Baby Doll (1956), and America America (1963)
John Huston won twice for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) and Prizzi's Honor (1985)
Cecil B. DeMille won for The Greatest Show on Earth (1952)
Vincent Minnelli won for Gigi (1958)
David Lean won thrice The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), and Doctor Zhivago (1965)
William Wyler won for Ben-Hur (1959)
Stanley Kramer won for Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)
George Cukor won for My Fair Lady (1964)
Mike Nichols won for The Graduate (1967)
Paul Newman won for Rachel, Rachel (1968)
William Friedkin won twice for The French Connection (1971) and The Exorcist (1973)
Francis Ford Coppola won twice for The Godfather (1972) and Apocalypse Now (1979)
Roman Polanski won for Chinatown (1974)
Milos Forman won thrice for One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), Amadeus (1984), and The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996)
Sidney Lumet won for Network (1976)
Robert Redford won for Ordinary People (1980)
Warren Beatty won for Reds (1981)
Richard Attenborough won for Gandhi (1982)
Barbra Streisand won for Yentl (1983)
Oliver Stone won thrice for Platoon (1986), Born on the Fourth of July (1989), and JFK (1991)
Bernardo Bertolucci won for The Last Emperor (1987)
Clint Eastwood won thrice for Bird (1988), Unforgiven (1992), and Million Dollar Baby (2004)
Kevin Costner won for Dances with Wolves (1990)
Steven Spielberg won thrice for Schindler's List (1993), Saving Private Ryan (1998), and The Fabelmans (2022)
Robert Zemeckis won for Forrest Gump (1994)
Mel Gibson won for Braveheart (1995)
James Cameron won twice for Titanic (1997) and Avatar (2009)
Sam Mendes won twice American Beauty (1999) and 1917 (2019)
Ang Lee won twice Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) and Brokeback Mountain (2005)
Robert Altman won for Gosford Park (2002)
Peter Jackson won for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
Martin Scorsese won thrice for Gangs of New York (2002), The Departed (2006), and Hugo (2011)
Danny Boyle won for Slumdog Millionaire (2008)
David Fincher won for The Social Network (2010)
Ben Affleck won for Argo (2012)
Damien Chazelle won for La La Land (2016)
Alejandro González Iñárritu won for The Revenant (2015)
Guillermo del Toro won for The Shape of Water (2017)
Alfonso Cuarón won twice for Gravity (2013) and Roma (2018)
Chloé Zhao won for Nomadland (2020)
Jane Campion won for The Power of the Dog (2021)