List of Famous Television Directors

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Updated April 13, 2020 22.4K views2.7k items

List of famous television directors, with photos, bios, and other information when available. Who are the top television directors in the world? This includes the most prominent television directors, living and dead, both in America and abroad. This list of notable television directors is ordered by their level of prominence, and can be sorted for various bits of information, such as where these historic television directors were born and what their nationality is. The people on this list are from different countries, but what they all have in common is that they're all renowned television directors.

This list is made up of many different people, including Pamela Anderson and Tyler Perry.

From reputable, prominent, and well known television directors to the lesser known television directors of today, these are some of the best professionals in the television director field. If you want to answer the questions, "Who are the most famous television directors ever?" and "What are the names of famous television directors?" then you're in the right place. {#nodes}
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  • Charlie Sheen
    Carlos Irwin Estévez (born September 3, 1965), known professionally as Charlie Sheen, is an American actor. Sheen has appeared in films including Platoon (1986), Wall Street (1987), Young Guns (1988), Eight Men Out (1988), Major League (1989), Hot Shots! (1991), and The Three Musketeers (1993). In the 2000s, Sheen replaced Michael J. Fox in Spin City, his performance earning him a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Musical or Comedy. He then starred in Two and a Half Men which earned him several Golden Globe and Emmy Award nominations. He most recently starred in the FX comedy series Anger Management, which concluded its 100-episode run in 2014. In 2010, Sheen was the highest paid actor on television and earned US$1.8 million per episode of Two and a Half Men.Sheen's personal life has made headlines, including reports of alcohol and drug abuse and marital problems, as well as allegations of domestic violence. In March 2011, his contract for Two and a Half Men was terminated by CBS and Warner Bros following his derogatory comments about the series' creator, Chuck Lorre. On November 17, 2015, Sheen publicly revealed that he is HIV positive, having been diagnosed about four years earlier.
  • Arnold Schwarzenegger
    Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger (; German: [ˈaɐ̯nɔlt ˈʃvaɐ̯tsn̩ˌʔɛɡɐ]; born July 30, 1947) is an Austrian-American politician, actor, filmmaker, and former professional bodybuilder. He served as the 38th Governor of California from 2003 to 2011. Schwarzenegger began lifting weights at the age of 15. He won the Mr. Universe title at age 20 and went on to win the Mr. Olympia contest seven times, remaining a prominent presence in bodybuilding and writing many books and articles on the sport. The Arnold Sports Festival, considered the second most important professional bodybuilding event in recent years, is named after him. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest bodybuilders of all time, as well as the sport's most charismatic ambassador.Schwarzenegger gained worldwide fame as a Hollywood action film icon. His breakthrough film was the sword-and-sorcery epic Conan the Barbarian in 1982, a box-office hit that resulted in a sequel. In 1984, he appeared in the title role of James Cameron's critically and commercially successful science-fiction thriller film The Terminator. He subsequently played a similar Terminator character in most of the franchise's later installments, Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003), Terminator Genisys (2015), and the upcoming Terminator: Dark Fate (2019). He has appeared in a number of other successful films, such as Commando (1985), The Running Man (1987), Predator (1987), Twins (1988), Total Recall (1990), Kindergarten Cop (1990), and True Lies (1994). Schwarzenegger married Maria Shriver, a niece of the 35th U.S. President John F. Kennedy and daughter of the 1972 Democratic vice presidential candidate and former Ambassador to France Sargent Shriver, in 1986. They separated in 2011 after he admitted to having fathered a child with another woman in 1997; the divorce was finalized in 2017. As a Republican, Schwarzenegger was first elected on October 7, 2003, in a special recall election to replace then-Governor Gray Davis. He was sworn in on November 17, to serve the remainder of Davis' term. He was then re-elected in the 2006 California gubernatorial election, to serve a full term as governor. In 2011, he completed his second term as governor and returned to acting. Schwarzenegger was nicknamed "the Austrian Oak" in his bodybuilding days, "Arnie" or "Schwarzy" during his acting career, "The Governator" (a portmanteau of "Governor" and "Terminator") during his political career, and is commonly known in Japan as "Shuwa Chan" (シュワちゃん).
  • Courteney Cox
    Courteney Bass Cox (born June 15, 1964) is an American actress, producer, and director. She is best known for her roles as Monica Geller on the NBC sitcom Friends, Gale Weathers in the horror series Scream, and Jules Cobb in the ABC/TBS sitcom Cougar Town, for which she earned her first Golden Globe nomination. Cox also starred in the FX series Dirt. She owns a production company, called Coquette Productions, which was created by Cox and her then-husband David Arquette. Cox also worked as a director on her sitcom Cougar Town and the television film Talhotblond.
  • Bill Cosby
    William Henry Cosby Jr. (; born July 12, 1937) is an American stand-up comedian, actor, musician, author, and convicted sex offender. He held an active career for over six decades before being convicted and imprisoned for sex offenses in 2018. Cosby began his career as a stand-up comic at the hungry i in San Francisco during the 1960s. He then landed a starring role in the television show I Spy, followed by his own sitcom The Bill Cosby Show, which ran for two seasons from 1969 to 1971. In 1972, using the Fat Albert character developed during his stand-up routines, Cosby created, produced, and hosted the animated comedy television series Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids which ran until 1985, centering on a group of young friends growing up in an urban area. Throughout the 1970s, Cosby starred in about a half-dozen films, and occasionally returned to film later in his career. In 1976, he earned his Doctor of Education from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His dissertation discussed the use of Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids as a teaching tool in elementary schools. Beginning in the 1980s, Cosby produced and starred in the television sitcom The Cosby Show, which aired from 1984 to 1992 and was rated as the number one show in America for 1985 through 1989. The sitcom highlighted the experiences and growth of an affluent African-American family. Cosby produced the spin-off sitcom A Different World, which aired from 1987 to 1993. He also starred in The Cosby Mysteries from 1994 to 1995 and in the sitcom Cosby from 1996 to 2000, and hosted Kids Say the Darndest Things from 1998 to 2000. Cosby's reputation was tarnished during the mid-2010s by numerous women who made sexual assault accusations against him; the earliest accusations date back decades. More than 60 women have accused him of either attempted assault, rape, drug-facilitated sexual assault, sexual battery, child sexual abuse, and sexual misconduct, which he had denied, and the statute of limitations had by then expired in nearly all cases. Cosby was found guilty of three counts of aggravated indecent assault and sentenced to three to ten years in prison in September 2018.
  • Amy Poehler
    Amy Meredith Poehler (; born September 16, 1971) is an American actress, comedian, director, producer, and writer. After studying improv at Chicago's Second City and ImprovOlympic in the early 1990s, she Co-founded the Chicago-based improvisational-comedy troupe Upright Citizens Brigade. The group moved to New York City in 1996 where their act became a half-hour sketch comedy series on Comedy Central in 1998. Along with other members of the comedy group, Poehler is a founder of the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre. She is best known for starring as Leslie Knope in the NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation, for which she won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Television Musical or Comedy Series in 2014 and a Critics' Choice Award for Best Actress in a Comedy Series in 2012. She was a cast member on the NBC television series Saturday Night Live from 2001 to 2008 and became co-anchor of SNL's Weekend Update in 2004. She and Tina Fey both won the 2016 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series for co-hosting Saturday Night Live. She is also known for voicing Joy in Inside Out, Sally O'Malley in the Horton Hears a Who! movie adaptation, and Bessie Higgenbottom in the Nickelodeon series The Mighty B! from 2008 to 2011. Poehler is an executive producer on the televisions series Welcome to Sweden, Broad City, Difficult People, and Russian Doll. In December 2015, Poehler received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contributions in television.
  • Melissa Joan Hart
    Melissa Joan Hart (born April 18, 1976) is an American actress. She had starring roles as the titular characters in the sitcoms Clarissa Explains It All (1991–1994), Sabrina the Teenage Witch (1996–2003), and Melissa & Joey (2010–2015). She has also appeared in films Drive Me Crazy (1999), Nine Dead (2009) and God's Not Dead 2 (2016).