This page lists the winners of and nominees for the Golden Globe Award for Best Director. Since its inception in 1943, it 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.
Having won all four of his nominations, Elia Kazan has been honored most often in this category. Martin Scorsese, Clint Eastwood, David Lean, Miloš Forman, and Oliver Stone tie for second place with three wins each. Steven Spielberg has had the most nominations (ten) but and has received the award twice. Barbra Streisand is the only woman to have won the award.
In the following lists, the first names, listed in bold type against a blue background, are the winners, and the following names are the remaining nominees. The years given are those in which the films under consideration were released, not the year of the ceremony, which takes place in January of the following year.
Notes:
- "†" indicates an Academy Award-winning performance.
- "§" indicates a Golden Globe Award-winning performance that was not nominated for an Academy Award.
Famous quotes containing the words golden, globe, award and/or director:
“Eyes that last I saw in tears
Through division
Here in death’s dream kingdom
The golden vision reappears
I see the eyes but not the tears
This is my affliction”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“I suppose an entire cabinet of shells would be an expression of the whole human mind; a Flora of the whole globe would be so likewise, or a history of beasts; or a painting of all the aspects of the clouds. Everything is significant.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The award of a pure gold medal for poetry would flatter the recipient unduly: no poem ever attains such carat purity.”
—Robert Graves (1895–1985)
“He wrote me sad Mother’s Day stories. He’d always kill me in the stories and tell me how bad he felt about it. It was enough to bring a tear to a mother’s eye.”
—Connie Zastoupil, U.S. mother of Quentin Tarantino, director of film Pulp Fiction. Rolling Stone, p. 76 (December 29, 1994)