Milos Forman

His top ten films of all time are: City Lights (1931), Citizen Kane (1941), Children of Paradise (1945), Miracle in Milan (1951), Giant (1956), The Godfather (1972), Amarcord (1973), American Graffiti (1973), The Deer Hunter (1978) and Raging Bull (1980). [Source: "Sight and Sound"].

Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume Two, 1945-1985." Pages 349-356. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1988.

Milos Forman was born Jan Tomas Forman in Caslav, Czechoslovakia, to Anna (Svabova), who ran a summer hotel, and Rudolf Forman, a professor. During World War II, his parents were taken away by the Nazis, after being accused of participating in the underground resistance. His father died in Buchenwald and his mother died in Auschwitz, and Milos became an orphan very early on. He studied screen-writing at the Prague Film Academy (F. A. M. U. ). In his Czechoslovakian films, Black Peter (1964), Loves of a Blonde (1965), and The Firemen's Ball (1967), he created his own style of comedy.

Two of Forman's films are in the Criterion Collection: Loves of a Blonde (1965) and The Firemen's Ball (1967).

During the invasion of his country by the troops of the Warsaw pact in the summer of 1968 to stop the Prague spring, he left Europe for the United States.

In spite of difficulties, he filmed Taking Off (1971) there and achieved his fame later with One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) adapted from the novel of Ken Kesey, which won five Oscars including one for direction.

Member of the 'Official Competition' jury at the 25th Cannes International Film Festival in 1972.

Is one of 10 directors to win the Golden Globe, Director's Guild, BAFTA, and Oscar for the same movie, winning for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975). The other directors to have achieved this are Mike Nichols for The Graduate (1967), Richard Attenborough for Gandhi (1982), Oliver Stone for Platoon (1986), Steven Spielberg for Schindler's List (1993), Ang Lee for Brokeback Mountain (2005) and Danny Boyle for Slumdog Millionaire (2008), Alfonso Cuarón for Gravity (2013) and Roma (2018), Alejandro G. Iñárritu for The Revenant (2015), and Guillermo del Toro for The Shape of Water (2017).

President of the 'Official Competition' jury at the 38th Cannes International Film Festival in 1985.

In Milan Kundera's short story "La Pomme d'or de l'éternel désir" (in the collection "Risibles amours"), Martin, the narrator's womanizing friend, introduces himself as Milos Forman to a naive country girl, that he tries to pick up, and claims that the narrator is Forman's regular cinematographer Miroslav Ondrícek [Folio edition, 1987, pg. 75].

He was due to have directed a film called Hell Camp in the early 1990s, from an original screenplay he had written with Adam Davidson. The film, to have been shot in New York and Tokyo, was to have starred Dylan Walsh and centred on two young Americans travelling to Japan and learning Japanese discipline and fighting spirit at a military-style camp. One falls in love with a Japanese girl while the other becomes a sumo wrestler. Shooting was to have started in November 1991 for a Christmas 1992 release but the film was cancelled when the Sumo Association of Japan objected to the script's allegedly unflattering portrayal of the sport. TriStar, the film's backers, offered to support Forman if he wanted to change the script or try to make the film without the cooperation of the Sumo Association but the director felt that the association's cooperation was needed for the film's authenticity in the provision of stadiums and professional sumo wrestlers.

He was the first choice of screenwriter Joe Eszterhas and original producer Irwin Winkler to direct Basic Instinct (1992). Forman liked the script and was interested in directing the film but Carolco, who had paid a record $3m for the script, made a deal with Paul Verhoeven to direct.

He was hand-picked by Michael Crichton to direct Disclosure (1994) but subsequently left the project due to creative differences with Crichton.

In 1995, it was announced that he would direct a remake of Dodsworth (1936) for Warner Bros. starring Harrison Ford from a script by Alfred Uhry. The project never came to fruition.

Awarded fourth annual John Huston Award for Artists Rights by the Artists Rights Foundation. [1997]

His sons, Andrew and James, were named after Andy Kaufman and Jim Carrey. Carrey portrays Kaufman in Forman's film Man on the Moon (1999).

President of the 'Official Competition' jury at the 7th Marrakech International Film Festival in 2007.

Will receive the Directors Guild of America's Lifetime Achievement Award for Distinguished Achievement in Motion Picture Direction [November 28, 2012].