Greatest Directors--W
by z_ingle | created - 04 Sep 2014 | updated - 11 Feb 2019 | PublicThis is a ranked list of directors whose last name begins with a "W".
1. Joss Whedon
Producer | Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Joss Whedon is the middle of five brothers - his younger brothers are Jed Whedon and Zack Whedon. Both his father, Tom Whedon and his grandfather, John Whedon were successful television writers. Joss' mother, Lee Stearns, was a history teacher and she also wrote novels as Lee Whedon. Whedon was ...
2. Billy Wilder
Writer | The Apartment
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 ...
3. Peter Weir
Director | Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
Peter Weir was born on August 21, 1944 in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. He is a director and writer, known for Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003), The Way Back (2010) and Witness (1985). He has been married to Wendy Stites since 1966. They have two children.
4. Wim Wenders
Director | Der Himmel über Berlin
Wim Wenders is an Oscar-nominated German filmmaker who was born Ernst Wilhelm Wenders on August 14, 1945 in Düsseldorf, which then was located in the British Occupation Zone of what became the Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Federal Republic of Germany, known colloquially as West Germany until ...
5. Orson Welles
Actor | Citizen Kane
His father, Richard Head Welles, was a well-to-do inventor, his mother, Beatrice (Ives) Welles, a beautiful concert pianist; Orson Welles was gifted in many arts (magic, piano, painting) as a child. When his mother died in 1924 (when he was nine) he traveled the world with his father. He was ...
6. William Wyler
Director | The 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, Wyler's reputation has unfairly suffered as the...
7. Lana Wachowski
Writer | The Matrix
Lana Wachowski and her sister Lilly Wachowski, also known as the Wachowskis, are the duo behind such ground-breaking movies as The Matrix (1999) and Cloud Atlas (2012). Born to mother Lynne, a nurse, and father Ron, a businessman of Polish descent, Wachowski grew up in Chicago and formed a tight ...
8. Raoul Walsh
Editor | The Birth of a Nation
Raoul Walsh's 52-year directorial career made him a Hollywood legend. Walsh was also an actor: He appeared in the first version of W. Somerset Maugham's "Rain" renamed Sadie Thompson (1928) opposite Gloria Swanson in the title role. He would have played the Cisco Kid in his own film In Old Arizona ...
9. William A. Wellman
Director | A Star Is Born
William Wellman, the Oscar-winning screenwriter-director of the original A Star Is Born (1937), was called "Wild Bill" during his World War I service as an aviator, a nickname that persisted in Hollywood due to his larger-than-life personality and lifestyle.
A leap-year baby born in 1896 on the 29th...
10. John Waters
Writer | Pecker
Growing up in Baltimore in the 1950s, John Waters was not like other children; he was obsessed by violence and gore, both real and on the screen. With his weird counter-culture friends as his cast, he began making silent 8mm and 16mm films in the mid-'60s; he screened these in rented Baltimore ...
11. Robert Wise
Director | West Side Story
Robert Earl Wise was born on September 10, 1914 in Winchester, Indiana, the youngest of three sons of Olive R. (Longenecker) and Earl Waldo Wise, a meat packer. His parents were both of Pennsylvania Dutch (German) descent. At age nineteen, the avid moviegoer came into the film business through an ...
12. Sam Wood
Director | A Night at the Opera
Following a two-year apprenticeship under Cecil B. DeMille as assistant director, Samuel Grosvenor Wood had the good fortune to have assigned to him two of the biggest stars at Paramount during their heyday: Wallace Reid (between 1919 and 1920) and Gloria Swanson (from 1921 to 1923). By the time ...
13. Lois Weber
Director | Suspense
Lois Weber, who had been a street-corner evangelist before entering motion pictures in 1905, became the first American woman movie director of note, and a major one at that. Herbert Blaché, the husband of Frenchwoman Alice Guy, the first woman to direct a motion picture (and arguably, the first ...
14. Kar-Wai Wong
Director | Yi dai zong shi
Wong Kar-wai (born 17 July 1956) is a Hong Kong Second Wave filmmaker, internationally renowned as an auteur for his visually unique, highly stylised, emotionally resonant work, including Ah fei zing zyun (1990), Dung che sai duk (1994), Chung Hing sam lam (1994), Do lok tin si (1995), Chun gwong ...
15. James Wan
Writer | Saw
James Wan (born 26 February 1977) is an Australian film producer, screenwriter and film director of Malaysian Chinese descent. He is widely known for directing the horror film Saw (2004) and creating Billy the puppet. Wan has also directed Dead Silence (2007), Death Sentence (2007), Insidious (2010)...
16. Spencer Williams
Actor | Juke Joint
American actor, writer, director, and producer whose early pioneering work in African-American or "race" films was eclipsed in fame by his role as one of the title characters in the equally pioneering1950s sitcom The Amos 'n Andy Show (1951). A native of Vidalia, Louisiana, Williams broke into the ...
17. John Woo
Director | Ying hung boon sik
Born in southern China, John Woo grew up in Hong Kong, where he began his film career as an assistant director in 1969, working for Shaw Brothers Studios. He directed his first feature in 1973 and has been a prolific director ever since, working in a wide variety of genres before A Better Tomorrow ...
18. James Whale
Director | Bride of Frankenstein
James Whale was an English film director, theatre director and actor. He is best remembered for his four classic horror films: Frankenstein (1931), The Old Dark House (1932), The Invisible Man (1933) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935). He also directed films in other genres, including what is ...
19. Michael Winterbottom
Director | A Mighty Heart
Michael took an English degree at Oxford then trained in film at Bristol and London breaking into television via the cutting room at Thames Television. He made his directorial debut with two documentaries on Ingmar Bergman His production of Love Lies Bleeding won the Silver Award at the 1993 New ...
20. Andrzej Wajda
Director | Katyn
Andrzej Wajda is an Academy Award-winning director. He is the most prominent filmmaker in Poland known for The Promised Land (1975), Man of Iron (1981), and Katyn (2007).
He was Born on March 6, 1926, in Suwalki, Poland. His mother, Aniela Wajda, was a teacher at a Ukrainian school. His father, ...
21. Robert Wiene
Director | Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari
Robert Wiene was born on April 24, 1873 in Breslau, Silesia, Germany [now Wroclaw, Dolnoslaskie, Poland]. He was a writer and director, known for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), Das wandernde Licht (1916) and The Knight of the Rose (1925). He died on July 17, 1938 in Paris, France.
22. Andy Warhol
Director | Blue Movie
Andrew Warhol's father, Ondrej, came from the Austria-Hungary Empire (now Slovakia) in 1912, and sent for his mother, Julia Zavackyová Warholová, in 1921. His father worked as a construction worker and later as a coal miner. Around some time, the family moved to Pittsburgh. During his teenage years...
23. Edgar Wright
Director | Shaun of the Dead
Edgar Howard Wright (born 18 April 1974) is an English director, screenwriter, producer, and actor. He is best known for his comedic Three Flavours Cornetto film trilogy consisting of Shaun of the Dead (2004), Hot Fuzz (2007), and The World's End (2013), made with recurrent collaborators Simon Pegg...
24. Joe Wright
Director | Pride & Prejudice
Joe Wright is an English film director. He is best known for Pride & Prejudice (2005), Atonement (2007), Anna Karenina (2012), and Darkest Hour (2017).
Wright always had an interest in the arts, especially painting. He would also make films on his Super 8 camera as well as spend time in the evenings...
25. Michael Winner
Director | Death Wish
Winner was an only child, born in Hampstead, London, England, to Helen (née Zlota) and George Joseph Winner (1910-1975), a company director. His family was Jewish; his mother was Polish and his father of Russian extraction. Following his father's death, Winner's mother gambled recklessly and sold ...
26. Wayne Wang
Director | Smoke
Wayne Wang is a key figure in the development of independent filmmaking, alternating major Hollywood studio films such as »The Joy Luck Club« with smaller, independent work like »Smoke«. Continuing to work in the two different worlds, Wang directed an independent digital film, »The Center of the ...
27. Doris Wishman
Director | Satan Was a Lady
Doris Wishman was born on June 1, 1912 in New York City, New York, USA. She was a director and producer, known for Satan Was a Lady (2001), Nude on the Moon (1961) and Diary of a Nudist (1961). She was married to Louis Silverman and Jack Abrahms. She died on August 10, 2002 in Miami, Florida, USA.
28. Keenen Ivory Wayans
Writer | White Chicks
The trail-blazing linchpin of a sprawling family dynasty of comic entertainers, it was multi-talented writer/director/producer Keenen Ivory Wayans (born June 8, 1958, in New York City) who led the familial pack and was the first to achieve national prominence when he successfully created, launched,...
29. Peter Watkins
Director | The War Game
Peter Watkins began his career in advertising as an assistant producer and turned to amateur filmmaking in the late 1950s. In the mid-'60s he was commissioned by BBC-TV to make two feature-length docudramas incorporating a quasi-newsreel style and nonprofessional actors. The second of these, The ...
30. Lina Wertmüller
Writer | Pasqualino Settebellezze
During the 1970s, Lina Wertmüller emblazoned her name into the pantheon of Italian cinema with a series of intensely polemical, deeply controversial and wonderfully entertaining films. Among the most politically outspoken and iconoclastic members of the second generation of postwar directors - the ...
31. Forest Whitaker
Actor | The Last King of Scotland
Forest Steven Whitaker has packaged a king-size talent into his hulking 6' 2", 220 lb. frame. He won an Academy Award for his performance as Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in the film The Last King of Scotland (2006), and has also won a Golden Globe and a BAFTA. He is the fourth African-American male to...
32. Paul Wegener
Actor | Der Golem
Paul Wegener was born in Arnoldsdorf, West Prussia, part of the German Empire. His birthplace is currently part of Poland, under the name "Jarantowice". Wegener's family included a number of scientists, the most notable being his cousin Alfred Wegener (1880-1930). Alfred is remembered as the ...
33. George Waggner
Director | The Wolf Man
George Waggner was born on September 7, 1894 in New York City, New York, USA. He was a director and writer, known for The Wolf Man (1941), Man Made Monster (1941) and Frisco Sal (1945). He was married to Danny Shannon. He died on December 11, 1984 in Hollywood, California, USA.
34. Taika Waititi
Producer | What We Do in the Shadows
Taika Waititi, also known as Taika Cohen, hails from the Raukokore region of the East Coast of the North Island of New Zealand, and is the son of Robin (Cohen), a teacher, and Taika Waititi, an artist and farmer. His father is Maori (Te-Whanau-a-Apanui), and his mother is of Ashkenazi Jewish, Irish...
35. William Witney
Director | The Crimson Ghost
Born in Oklahoma in 1915, Witney broke into the business in 1933, working at Mascot, the leading producer of low-budget serials. After Mascot and other small companies merged in 1935 to form Republic, Witney graduated to director (at 21, he was Hollywood's youngest). Witney teamed with director ...
36. Denzel Washington
Actor | Fences
Denzel Hayes Washington, Jr. was born on December 28, 1954 in Mount Vernon, New York. He is the middle of three children of a beautician mother, Lennis, from Georgia, and a Pentecostal minister father, Denzel Washington, Sr., from Virginia. After graduating from high school, Denzel enrolled at ...
37. Edward D. Wood Jr.
Writer | Plan 9 from Outer Space
Hacks are nothing new in Hollywood. Since the beginning of the film industry at the turn of the 20th century, thousands of untalented people have come to Los Angeles from all over America and abroad to try to make it big (as writers, producers, directors, actors, talent agents, singers, composers, ...
38. Charles Walters
Director | Lili
Charles Walters was born on November 17, 1911 in Pasadena, California, USA. He was a director and actor, known for Lili (1953), The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964) and Ask Any Girl (1959). He died on August 13, 1982 in Malibu, California, USA.
39. Andrés Wood
Producer | Machuca
Andrés Wood (1965, Chile). After studying economics at the University of Chile he left for New York, where he attended a film course. When he returned to Chile he made his first feature film 'Historias de fútbol' which was a box-office hit.
40. Frederick Wiseman
Director | National Gallery
Born in 1930, Wiseman is a Cambridge, Massachusetts resident and member of the Massachusetts Bar Association who turned to filmmaking in 1967, after years as an instructor and/or researcher at Boston University, Brandeis University, and Harvard. In 1970 he founded Zipporah Films, Inc., which ...
41. Xiaoshuai Wang
Director | Rizhao Chongqing
Wang Xiaoshuai (Director, Writer, Producer)
Wang Xiaoshuai is one of very few masters who remains true to his art in spite of rampant commercialism in the Chinese film market. Evoking the trauma of ordinary Chinese people caught in extraordinary times, his works span different eras, yet consistently...
42. Régis Wargnier
Writer | Est - Ouest
Régis Wargnier was born on April 18, 1948 in Metz, Moselle, France. He is a writer and director, known for East/West (1999), Indochine (1992) and La femme de ma vie (1986).
43. David Wain
Writer | Wet Hot American Summer
David Wain was born and raised in Shaker Heights, Ohio.
He met the other members of the comedy troupe The State while a film student at NYU, where he graduated from in 1991.
As part of The State, he co-created and co-starred on their self-titled MTV sketch comedy show in the mid 90's. He then ...
44. Claudia Weill
Director | Girlfriends
Claudia Weill was born on December 20, 1946 in New York City, New York, USA. She is a director and actress, known for Girlfriends (1978), ABC Afterschool Specials (1972) and Girls (2012). She has been married to Walter Simon Teller since July 14, 1985. They have two children.
45. Vincent Ward
Director | The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey
Vincent Ward has produced, executive produced and/or written and directed feature films including What Dreams May Come (Which won an Oscar and was nominated for 2 Academy Awards), The River Queen (Won best film in Shanghai) and The Last Samurai (4 Academy Award nominations and winner of Best ...
46. Geoffrey Wright
Writer | Romper Stomper
Writer/director Geoffrey Wright specializes in making tough, gritty features with a hard and unflinching edge to them. He was born in 1959 in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Geoffrey graduated from the Swinburne Film and Television School with a Diploma of Arts in Film and Television. Wright worked...
47. Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Director | Memoria
Apichatpong Weerasethakul (b. 1970, Bangkok) grew up in Khon Kaen, a city in the north east of Thailand. He has a degree in Architecture from Khon Kaen University and a Master of Fine Arts in Filmmaking from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has been making films and videos since the ...
48. Ben Wheatley
Director | Free Fire
Ben Wheatley was born in May 1972 in Billericay, Essex, England, UK. He is a director and writer, known for Free Fire (2016), Kill List (2011) and Sightseers (2012).
49. Ti West
Director | Pearl
Ti West is most notable for directing horror films, as well as being an actor, writer, producer, and editor. Ti broke out, after directing various projects, in 2009, when he directed two feature films - 2009's The House Of The Devil and Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever. Ti later directed, with his ...
50. Jirí Weiss
Director | Vlcí jáma
Jirí Weiss was born on March 29, 1913 in Prague, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary [now Czech Republic]. He was a director and writer, known for Vlcí jáma (1958), 90 Degrees in the Shade (1965) and Martha et moi (1990). He was married to Katerina Weiss. He died on April 9, 2004 in Santa Monica...
51. Kôji Wakamatsu
Director | Jitsuroku Rengo Sekigun: Asama sanso e no michi
The pioneering Kôji Wakamatsu (born Ito Takashi) was a contemporary of Oshima Nagisa and equally controversial, yet not as famous. The man was born in Miyagi Prefecture in the north of Japan before dropping out of agricultural school, some say following a physical altercation, moving to Tokyo at ...
52. Roland West
Director | Alibi
Roland West was born in Cleveland, OH, and became an actor in the theater and on the vaudeville stage. He got his start in the film industry in New York City around 1915, forming several production companies to shoot films there. He later worked as general manager of production for producer Joseph ...
53. Bo Widerberg
Director | Ådalen 31
Bo Widerberg was born on June 8, 1930 in Malmö, Skåne län, Sweden. He was a director and writer, known for Adalen 31 (1969), All Things Fair (1995) and Joe Hill (1971). He was married to Vanja Nettelbladt and Ann-Mari Björklund. He died on May 1, 1997 in Ängelholm, Skåne län, Sweden.
54. Harry Watt
Director | The Siege of Pinchgut
Scottish-born director Harry Watt began his career in the 1930s, and directed several documentaries during World War II, most notably Target for Tonight (1941). He went to Ealing Studios after the war, and the five films he made there were all shot in Africa or Australia. He turned to directing ...
55. Anne Wheeler
Director | Anne
Born in Alberta, to a doctor father and musician mother, Anne earned degrees in mathematics and music, putting her way through university as a performer. She came to film-making after working and traveling around the world for a couple of years, exploring Europe, Asia and Africa. She returned home ...
56. Joyce Wieland
Director | The Far Shore
Joyce Wieland was born on June 30, 1931 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She was a director and editor, known for The Far Shore (1976), Sailboat (1967) and 1933 (1967). She was married to Michael Snow. She died on June 27, 1998 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
57. Bretaigne Windust
Director | The Enforcer
Bretaigne Windust was born on January 20, 1906 in Paris, France. Bretaigne was a director and producer, known for The Enforcer (1951), Startime (1959) and Winter Meeting (1948). Bretaigne was married to Irene Windust and Lora Baxter. Bretaigne died on March 18, 1960 in New York City, New York, USA.
58. Pete Walker
Director | Man of Violence
Writer, director, and producer Pete Walker was born on July 4, 1939 in Brighton, Sussex, England. The son of musical comedy performer Syd Walker, Pete began his show business career as a stand-up comic at a Soho strip club. Walker went on to play bit roles in a few films prior to starting his own ...
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