10 Best Directors That Have Never Won An Oscar
6. Ridley Scott
Stephen Soderbergh’s Traffic beat Ridley Scott’s Gladiator to the Best Director Academy Award in 2001.
That’s pretty much all this entry needs to say, although cutting it so short wouldn’t come close to capturing Scott’s long and genre busting career which really ought to have netted him the Best Director gong by now.
Thelma & Louise and Black Hawk Down also saw him nominated, while The Martian was up for Best Picture but saw Scott personally overlooked for Best Director. Away from these, Alien, Blade Runner, American Gangster and All The Money In The World were all overlooked entirely.
More than most here, while Scott has helmed the brilliant movies mentioned above, he’s also been in charge of some atrocious productions. GI Jane, Robin Hood and Exodus: Gods & Kings were all shot by Scott, as well as the infamous Cameron Diaz car sex scene in The Counsellor. That’s car sex as in sex with a car, not inside of one.
These bad efforts shouldn’t cancel out the good, but you can’t help but feel if he’d maintained a better hit rate, he might have won by now.