Steven Spielberg Becomes First Person Nominated For Best Director Oscar In 6 Different Decades

Steven Spielberg, the director of West Side Story, displays his cinematic muscles as the first person in Oscar history to garner Best Director nods in six decades. The iconic filmmaker received his seventh category nomination as part of the 2022 Oscar nominations, which also included Best Picture, Best Actress in a Supporting Role, Best Cinematography, Best Sound, Best Costume Design, and Best Production Design for his musical adaption of West Side Story.

Since his first Best Director nomination in 1978 for Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the 75-year-old has received individual recognition in at least one of the Academy’s Best Director lineups for his work on Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Schindler’s List (1993), Saving Private Ryan (1998), Munich (2005), and Lincoln (2012), winning the award for Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan, at the 1994 and 1999 ceremonies, respectively.

Before his nomination for West Side Story, Spielberg had had 17 nominations in his career, including the two aforementioned wins and a Best Picture triumph as a producer of Schindler’s List. At the 1987 Academy Awards, he received the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award.

Spielberg’s nomination for Best Director in 2022 breaks a tie with fellow Hollywood heavyweight Martin Scorsese, who has also been nominated for Best Director in five decades for directing films such as Raging Bull (1980), The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), Goodfellas (1990), Gangs of New York (2002), The Aviator (2004), The Departed (2006), Hugo (2011), The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), and The Irishman (released in 2019).

But Scorsese received the nomination in 2020, bringing the total number of decades to five, one short of Spielberg. The 94th Academy Awards will be televised live on ABC on Sunday, March 27. The complete list of Oscar nominations has already been announced.

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