Source link : https://las-vegas-news.com/10-famous-directors-with-only-one-oscar/
Hollywood loves round numbers and neat narratives, but the Academy Award record books rarely cooperate. Some of the most celebrated filmmakers in cinema history, the ones whose names show up on university syllabi and greatest-films-of-all-time lists, have exactly one Best Director Oscar to their name. Not two, not five, just one single golden statue earned after decades of work, sometimes for a film that isn’t even considered their masterpiece.
That imbalance says less about talent and more about how strange and unpredictable Oscar voting has always been. Below are ten directors whose entire directing careers, spanning classics, cult favorites, and box office giants, are represented by a lone win at the Academy Awards.
Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese won his first Oscar in 2007 for directing The Departed, a film that won four Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director. It came after decades of near misses, with his first nomination in Best Director for Raging Bull back in 1981, and six further nominations in the decades that followed without a win.
Since that 2007 victory, the drought has continued in a different direction. Scorsese has since received eight more nominations but no second Oscar win. Given his filmography includes Goodfellas, Taxi Driver, and Killers of the Flower Moon, it’s a strange twist that a solid but less iconic crime thriller ended up being the film that finally satisfied the…
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Author : Matthias Binder
Publish date : 2026-08-03 08:03:00
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