Empire Award for Best Director


The Empire Award for Best Director is an Empire Award presented annually by the British film magazine Empire to honor directors working within the film industry. The Empire Award for Best Director is one of five ongoing awards which were first introduced at the 1st Empire Awards ceremony in 1996 with Danny Boyle receiving the award for his direction of Shallow Grave. Winners are voted by the readers of Empire magazine.
Since its inception, the award has been given to 16 directors. Christopher Nolan has received the most awards in this category with three awards. Christopher Nolan and Peter Jackson were nominated on seven occasions, more than any other director. Kathryn Bigelow and Patty Jenkins are the only female directors to be nominated for the award. Rian Johnson is the most recent winner in this category for his direction of .

Winners and nominees

In the list below, winners are listed first in boldface, followed by the other nominees. The number of the ceremony appears in parentheses after the awards year, linked to the article on that ceremony.
"†" indicates Academy Award-winning direction.
"‡" indicates Academy Award-nominated direction.

1990s

2000s

2010s

Multiple awards and nominations

Multiple awards

The following individuals received two or more Best Director awards:
AwardsFilm
3Christopher Nolan
2David Yates
2Steven Spielberg

Multiple nominations

The following individuals received two or more Best Director nominations:
NominationsFilm
7Christopher Nolan
7Peter Jackson
5Steven Spielberg
4Quentin Tarantino
4Edgar Wright
3Ang Lee
3David Fincher
3M. Night Shyamalan
3Steven Soderbergh
2Bryan Singer
2Cameron Crowe
2David Yates
2J. J. Abrams
2James Cameron
2Joel Coen and Ethan Coen
2Joe Wright
2Michael Mann
2Paul Greengrass
2Paul Thomas Anderson
2Peter Weir
2Sam Raimi
2Taika Waititi