Paul Thomas Anderson

Directing

Born 1970-06-26 Studio City, California, USA 47 credits Academy Awards 2 Golden Globe Awards 2 BAFTA Awards 2 Directors Guild of America 1 Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Director 1 Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Adapted Screenplay 1 Silver Bear for Best Director 1 Cannes Best Director Award 1

Awards

Won 2 Academy Awards

Academy Awards 2 won · 14 nominated

2026 Best Director Won One Battle After Another
2026 Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay Won One Battle After Another
2022 Best Director Nominated Licorice Pizza
2022 Best Writing, Original Screenplay Nominated Licorice Pizza
2022 Best Picture Nominated Licorice Pizza
2018 Best Director Nominated Phantom Thread
2018 Best Picture Nominated Phantom Thread
2015 Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay Nominated Inherent Vice
2008 Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay Nominated There Will Be Blood
2008 Best Picture Nominated There Will Be Blood
2008 Best Director Nominated There Will Be Blood
2000 Best Writing, Original Screenplay Nominated Magnolia
1998 Best Writing, Original Screenplay Nominated Boogie Nights
— Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay Nominated One Battle After Another
— Best Picture Nominated One Battle After Another
— Best Director Nominated One Battle After Another

Golden Globe Awards 2 won

2026 Best Screenplay Won One Battle After Another
2026 Best Director Won One Battle After Another

BAFTA Awards 2 won

2026 Best Direction Won One Battle After Another
2026 Best Adapted Screenplay Won One Battle After Another

Directors Guild of America 1 won

2026 Outstanding Directing – Feature Film Won One Battle After Another

Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Director 1 won

2026 Best Director Won One Battle After Another

Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Adapted Screenplay 1 won

2026 Best Adapted Screenplay Won One Battle After Another

Silver Bear for Best Director 1 won

2008 Best Director Won There Will Be Blood

Cannes Best Director Award 1 won

2002 Cannes Best Director Award Won Punch-Drunk Love

Award data from Wikidata (CC0). Coverage may be incomplete.

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Paul Thomas Anderson (born June 26, 1970), also known by his initials PTA, is an American filmmaker. Often described as one of the preeminent filmmakers of his generation, he is the recipient of three Academy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, four BAFTAs, three Critics Choice Awards, and nominations for a Grammy. He is the only person to have won the Academy Award for Best Director, as well as the Best Director Awards at the Cannes Film Festival, Venice Film Festival, and the Berlin International Film Festival. In addition to those accolades, he won the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival. Many of Anderson's films are psychological dramas characterized by depictions of desperate characters and explorations of dysfunctional families, alienation, loneliness, and redemption, alongside a bold visual style that uses constantly moving cameras and long takes. After his directorial debut, Hard Eight (1996), Anderson had critical and commercial success with Boogie Nights (1997), and received further accolades with Magnolia (1999) and Punch-Drunk Love (2002). There Will Be Blood (2007), Anderson's fifth film, is regarded as one of the greatest films of the 21st century. It was followed by The Master (2012) and Inherent Vice (2014), an adaptation of the 2009 novel by Thomas Pynchon. Anderson's next three films, Phantom Thread (2017), Licorice Pizza (2021) and One Battle After Another (2025) were all nominated for the Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director, while the last earned him wins for both and Best Adapted Screenplay and became his highest-grossing film. Anderson is noted for his collaborations with the cinematographer Robert Elswit, the costume designer Mark Bridges, the composers Jon Brion and Jonny Greenwood, and actors including Philip Seymour Hoffman, Daniel Day-Lewis, John C. Reilly, and Joaquin Phoenix. He has directed music videos for artists including Fiona Apple, Haim, Aimee Mann, Joanna Newsom, Michael Penn, Radiohead, and the Smile. He also directed a 2015 documentary about Greenwood's album Junun, and the short music film Anima (2019) for the Radiohead singer Thom Yorke. Description above from the Wikipedia article Paul Thomas Anderson, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.