Milos Forman

Jan Tomáš "Miloš" Forman (18 February 1932 – 13 April 2018) was a Czech-American film director, screenwriter, actor, and professor who lived and worked primarily in Czechoslovakia until 1968.

Forman was an important component of the Czechoslovak New Wave. Film scholars and Czechoslovakian authorities saw his 1967 film The Firemen's Ball as a biting satire on Eastern European Communism, and it was banned for many years in his home country. He left Czechoslovakia for the United States, and his films One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) and Amadeus (1984) acquired particular renown, and both gained him an Academy Award for Best Director. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was the second film to win all five major Academy Awards (Best Picture, Actor in Leading Role, Actress in Leading Role, Director, and Screenplay) after It Happened One Night in 1934—an accomplishment not repeated until 1991 by The Silence of the Lambs.