Billy Wilder

Billy Wilder's biography

Billy Wilder is 96 years old screenwriter born at Sucha Beskidzka. He was born on Friday 22nd of June 1906. He is often nicknamed as The Viennese Pixie. According to year of birth 1906 he belongs to Greatest Generation. Birthday on 22nd of June means he is Cancer. Cancer is a watery sign. They are very friendly and show motherly love to everyone. According to ascendant calculator, an important trait of these natives is their sensitive nature.

He is citizen of United States of America. His primary profession is to be screenwriter. You can know him also as film director, film producer, writer. He is recently known as journalist.

Billy Wilder's schools

We found 1 school He attended. Name of the school: University of Vienna.

Billy Wilder's career

His main focus is to be screenwriter.

How did Billy Wilder die

He died on on Wednesday 27th of March 2002 when he was 96 years old at Beverly Hills. Billy Wilders death was caused by pneumonia. It happend like natural causes.

Awards and competitions

Billy Wilder's Awards

• He received award for Academy Award for Best Director for work The Lost Weekend in 1945
• He received award for Academy Award for Best Director for work The Apartment in 1960
• He received award for Academy Award for Best Writing, Original Screenplay for work Sunset Boulevard in 1950
• He received award for Academy Award for Best Writing, Original Screenplay for work The Apartment in 1960
• He received award for Academy Award for Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay for work The Lost Weekend in 1945
• He received award for Academy Award for Best Picture for work The Apartment in 1960
• He received award for Palme d'Or for work The Lost Weekend in 1946
• He received award for Golden Globe Award for Best Director for work The Lost Weekend in 1946
• He received award for Golden Globe Award for Best Director for work Sunset Boulevard in 1951
• He received award for Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay for work Sabrina in 1955
• He received award for BAFTA Award for Best Film for work The Apartment in 1961

Billy Wilder's Nominations

• He was nominated for Academy Award for Best Director
• He was nominated for Academy Award for Best Director
• He was nominated for Academy Award for Best Director
• He was nominated for Academy Award for Best Director
• He was nominated for Academy Award for Best Director
• He was nominated for Academy Award for Best Director
• He was nominated for Academy Award for Best Director
• He was nominated for Academy Award for Best Director
• He was nominated for Academy Award for Best Story
• He was nominated for Academy Award for Best Writing, Original Screenplay
• He was nominated for Academy Award for Best Writing, Original Screenplay
• He was nominated for Academy Award for Best Writing, Original Screenplay
• He was nominated for Academy Award for Best Writing, Original Screenplay
• He was nominated for Academy Award for Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay
• He was nominated for Academy Award for Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay
• He was nominated for Academy Award for Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay
• He was nominated for Academy Award for Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay
• He was nominated for Academy Award for Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay
• He was nominated for Academy Award for Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay
• He was nominated for Academy Award for Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay
• He was nominated for Academy Award for Best Picture

What Billy Wilder has done for a first time

• Awarded Austria's Golden Order, First Class for Meritorious Services. [1991]
• On the first page of every screenplay of his own he used to write "Cum Deo" (With God), a habit he said he had taken from Pauline Kael. "It's not harmful, anyway," Wilder explained, "and could corrupt that guy dwelling up there".
• His first Hollywood film was The Major and the Minor (1942).
• He was always uncomfortable around children and was an absentee father to his two children from his first marriage. He and his second wife, Audrey, agreed that they didn't want children.

Billy Wilder's quotes

• [after directing Marilyn Monroe for the second time in Some Like It Hot (1959)] I have discussed this with my doctor and my psychiatrist and they tell me I'm too old and too rich to go through this again.
• Some pictures play wonderfully to a room of eight people. I don't go for that. I go for the masses. I go for the end effect.
• Anyone who doesn't believe in miracles isn't a realist.
• My English is a mixture between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Archbishop [Desmond Tutu].
• A bad play folds and is forgotten, but in pictures we don't bury our dead. When you think it's out of your system, your daughter sees it on television and says, "My father is an idiot."
• The Wilder message is don't bore--don't bore people.
• I just made pictures I would've liked to see.
• [opon seeing Sigmund Freud's therapy couch] It was a very tiny little thing. All his theories were based on the analysis of very short people!
• [in 1976] They say Wilder is out of touch with his times. Frankly, I regard it as a compliment. Who the hell wants to be in touch with these times?
• Making movies is little like walking into a dark room. Some people stumble across furniture, others break their legs but some of us see better in the dark than others. The ultimate trick is to convince, persuade.
• I was not a guy writing deep-dish revelations. If people see a picture of mine and then sit down and talk about it for 15 minutes, that is a very fine reward, I think.
• Today we spend 80% of the time making deals and 20% making pictures.
• [to a cameraman on one of his pictures] Shoot a few scenes out of focus. I want to win the foreign film award.
• A director must be a policeman, a midwife, a psychoanalyst, a sycophant and a bastard.
• [on Marilyn Monroe] Breasts like granite and a brain like Swiss cheese.
• Hollywood didn't kill Marilyn Monroe; it's the Marilyn Monroes who are killing Hollywood.
• I have ten commandments. The first nine are, thou shalt not bore. The tenth is, thou shalt have right of final cut.
• [about the Hotel Marmont on Sunset Blvd., a piece of Hollywood history] I would rather sleep in a bathroom than in another hotel.
• [asked if it was important for a director to know how to write] No, but it helps if he knows how to read.
• People copy, people steal. Most of the pictures they make nowadays are loaded down with special effects. I couldn't do that. I quit smoking because I couldn't reload my Zippo.
• Trust your own instinct. Your mistakes might as well be your own, instead of someone else's.
• You have to have a dream so you can get up in the morning.
• You're only as good as the best thing you've ever done.
• Hindsight is always 20/20.
• France is the only country where the money falls apart and you can't tear the toilet paper.
• [on Marlene Dietrich] Mother Teresa with better legs.
• [on Marilyn Monroe] An endless puzzle without any solution.
• The Austrians are brilliant people. They made the world believe that [Adolf Hitler] was a German and [Ludwig van Beethoven] an Austrian.
• If you're going to tell people the truth, be funny or they'll kill you.
• An audience is never wrong. An individual member of it may be an imbecile, but 1000 imbeciles together in the dark--that is critical genius.
• In certain pictures I do hope they will leave the cinema a little enriched, but I don't make them pay a buck and a half and then ram a lecture down their throats.
• You watch, the new wave will discover the slow dissolve in ten years or so.
• What critics call dirty in our movies, they call lusty in foreign films.
• An actor enters through a door, you've got nothing. But if he enters through a window, you've got a situation.
• The best director is the one you don't see.
• The close-up is such a valuable thing--like a trump at bridge.
• Everybody in the audience is an idiot, but taken together they're a genius.
• I don't think that making movies is my entire life. But there's one thing, you know, that I hate more than not being taken seriously, is to be taken too seriously.
• [on why his films rarely feature children]: I could direct a dog. Kids, I don't know.
• [on film critic Judith Crist] Inviting her to review one of your pictures is like inviting the Boston Strangler to massage your neck.
• [his thumbnail example of how he pictured existentialism] This boy falls in love with his mother and marries her. They live together quite happily until one day he learns that she isn't his mother. So he commits suicide.
• [on Marilyn Monroe] I had no problem with Monroe. Monroe had a problem with Monroe.
• [on Audrey Hepburn] She gives the distinct impression that she can spell "schizophrenia".
• [after hearing actor Cliff Osmond audition for a singing part] You have Van Gogh's ear for music.
• [on his abortive attempts to get projects off the ground in the 1980s] I was retired but I didn't know it, because I was too busy.
• If there are two guys that think the same way, that have the same background, that have the same political convictions and all the rest, it's terrible. It's not collaboration. It's like pulling on one end of the rope.
• [of Raymond Chandler] He was a mess, but he could write a beautiful sentence.
• I don't do cinema. I make movies.
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Billy Wilder's body shape

Lets describe how Billy Wilder looks. We will focus on his body shape. Body build is average.