Where famous film directors grew up and lived

Akira Kurosawa1910–1936

📍 7-chome Omori-kita, Ōta City, Tokyo 143-0016, Japan

I was born on the 23rd of March 1910 in the Omori district of Tokyo, the son of a sake merchant, and grew up in a family proud of its samurai heritage. My father insisted all his children…

Alfred Hitchcock1899–1925

📍 517 High Road, Leytonstone, London E11 4PB, England

I was born on the 13th of August 1899 above my father's grocery shop in Leytonstone, then a quiet suburb at the northeastern edge of London. Leytonstone was respectable lower-middle-class …

Alicia Markova1910–1914

📍 Finsbury Park, London N4, UK

I was born Lilian Alicia Marks in December 1910 in Finsbury Park, north London, the eldest of four daughters of Arthur Marks, who was Jewish, and Eileen, an Irish Catholic who had converted…

Andy Warhol1928–1949

📍 3252 Dawson Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA

I was born Andrew Warhola on the 6th of August 1928 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of Ruthenian immigrants. The Pittsburgh of my childhood was a steel city — dark with smoke…

Charlie Chaplin1889–1910

📍 287 Kennington Road, London SE11 6BY, England

I was born on the 16th of April 1889 in Walworth, South London, and grew up in the working-class streets of Kennington and Lambeth in conditions of genuine poverty. My mother Hannah was a…

Christopher Nolan1970–1988

📍 Highgate, London N6, UK

Christopher Nolan was born in Westminster, London, in July 1970 and grew up in Highgate, a leafy, hilly corner of north London with old houses, Highgate Wood, the famous cemetery and views…

Clint Eastwood1930–1954

📍 San Francisco, CA 94102

Clinton Eastwood Jr. was born in San Francisco in May 1930, during the Depression, the elder child of Clinton Eastwood Sr., a steelworker and later a businessman, and Margaret Ruth Runner…

Federico Fellini1920–1939

📍 Rimini, Emilia-Romagna, Italy

I was born in January 1920 at Via Dardanelli 10 in Rimini, then a sleepy little town on the Adriatic that came alive each summer with holidaymakers, and I lived in several houses around the…

Francis Ford Coppolafrom 1975

📍 Rutherford, Napa Valley, CA 94573, USA

Francis Ford Coppola was born in Detroit and grew up in Woodside, Queens, after his father, a flautist, joined Toscanini's NBC Symphony Orchestra. His was a big, musical Italian-American…

François Truffaut1932–1959

📍 24 Rue de Navarin, 75009 Paris, France

I was born François Truffaut on the 6th of February 1932 in Montmartre, Paris, the illegitimate son of Janine de Monferrand, raised by my maternal grandmother until I was eight. My…

Gene Kelly1912–1938

📍 Highland Park, Pittsburgh, PA 15206, USA

I was born in August 1912 in a rented house on the corner of Portland and Bryant streets in Highland Park, a leafy, hilly neighbourhood in the east of Pittsburgh, the third of five children…

George Clooneyfrom 2002

📍 Villa Oleandra, Laglio, Province of Como, Italy

George Clooney grew up in Kentucky and southern Ohio, in Augusta and the towns around Cincinnati, the son of a local TV newsman, Nick Clooney, and nephew of the singer Rosemary Clooney …

George Lucas1944–1962

📍 Modesto, California, USA

George Lucas was born in Modesto, California, in May 1944, a farming town in the hot, flat Central Valley. His father, George Sr., ran a stationery and office-supply shop in town and owned…

Greta Gerwig1983–2002

📍 Sacramento, California, USA

Greta Gerwig was born in Sacramento, California, in August 1983 and grew up in the River Park neighbourhood, a quiet, leafy area of ranch houses near the American River, in a city she has…

Hayao Miyazakifrom 1970

📍 Tokorozawa, Saitama, Japan

Hayao Miyazaki was born in Tokyo in 1941, during the war, and spent part of his childhood evacuated to Utsunomiya; his family's firm made rudders and parts for fighter planes, which began…

Ingmar Bergman1967–2007

📍 Hammars, Fårö, Gotland, Sweden

I first came to Fårö on a stormy April day in 1960. Svensk Filmindustri had suggested the island at the northern tip of Gotland as a location for Through a Glass Darkly, and I went…

Jacques Cousteau1936–1950

📍 Sanary-sur-Mer, Var, France

I was a sickly child, born in Saint-André-de-Cubzac near Bordeaux, and doctors told me to swim for my health, so I did, and I never stopped. I loved machines and films too, and bought my…

James Cameron1954–1971

📍 Chippawa, Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada

James Cameron was born in Kapuskasing, Ontario, in August 1954 and grew up in Chippawa, a historic village on the Niagara River just above the falls, now part of the city of Niagara Falls…

Jim Henson1936–1948

📍 Leland, MS 38756, USA

I was born in Greenville in 1936 and spent my early childhood a few miles away in Leland, a small town in the Mississippi Delta. My father was an agronomist working at the federal…

John Ford1894–1917

📍 Bowery Beach Road, Cape Elizabeth, ME 04107

I was born John Martin Feeney on the 1st of February 1894 in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, the thirteenth child of Irish immigrant parents. The sea and the rocky coastline of my childhood gave me…

Martin Scorsese1950–1964

📍 Elizabeth Street, Little Italy, New York, NY 10012, USA

Martin Scorsese was born in Flushing, Queens, in November 1942, the son of Charles and Catherine Scorsese, second-generation Sicilian-Americans who worked in Manhattan's garment district as…

Orson Welles1915–1931

📍 463 Park Avenue, Kenosha, WI 53140

I was born on the 6th of May 1915 in Kenosha, Wisconsin, the son of Richard Welles, an inventor, and Beatrice Ives, a concert pianist. My childhood was extraordinary and unstable: my…

Peter Jackson1961–1980

📍 Pukerua Bay, Porirua, Wellington, New Zealand

Peter Jackson grew up in Pukerua Bay, a small seaside village on the coast about forty minutes north of Wellington, the only child of Bill and Joan Jackson, who had emigrated from England…

Quentin Tarantino1966–1985

📍 Torrance, California, USA

Quentin Tarantino was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, in March 1963. His mother, Connie, was just sixteen when she became pregnant, and his father left before he was born. When Quentin was…

Stanley Kubrick1928–1946

📍 Grand Concourse, The Bronx, New York, NY 10457, USA

I was born in Manhattan in July 1928 and grew up in the Bronx, first in an apartment on Clinton Avenue and later in buildings off the Grand Concourse, the borough's grand boulevard of Art…

Steven Spielberg1957–1964

📍 Arcadia, Phoenix, Arizona, USA

Steven Spielberg was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in December 1946, and in 1957, when he was ten, his family moved to Phoenix, Arizona, settling in a house on North 49th Street in Arcadia, a…

Sylvester Stallone1958–1965

📍 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

Sylvester Stallone was born in Hell's Kitchen, New York, in 1946. A difficult birth damaged a facial nerve, leaving him with the slightly drooping lip and slurred speech that became part of…

Taika Waititi1975–1993

📍 Raukokore, Bay of Plenty, New Zealand

Taika Waititi grew up between Wellington, with his mother, and Raukōkore, on the remote eastern coast of the Bay of Plenty, with his father. His father, Taika Waititi senior, was a farmer…

Tim Burton1958–1976

📍 Burbank, California, USA

Tim Burton was born in Burbank, California, in August 1958 and grew up in this sunny, orderly suburb in the San Fernando Valley, home to the Disney, Warner Bros and NBC studios, with neat…

Walt Disney1901–1911

📍 Marceline, Missouri, USA

I grew up in Marceline, Missouri — a small town on the Santa Fe Railroad in the middle of the country — from ages four to eight, and those four years were the most formative of my life. The…

Wes Anderson1969–1987

📍 Houston, Texas, USA

Wes Anderson was born in Houston, Texas, in May 1969, the second of three brothers. His father, Melver, ran an advertising and public relations company, and his mother, Texas Anne, worked…