Irwin Winkler

 ( Year Of Birth Missing ) 

Winkler produced such noteworthy features as The Right Stuff (1983) which received eight Academy Award nominations with four wins, Round Midnight (1986) which garnered two Academy Award nominations. He then produced back-to-back Costa-Gavras films, Betrayed (1988) and Music Box (1989), which was nominated and won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, before receiving another Best Picture Oscar nomination for Goodfellas (1990). He also produced Rocky II (1978), Rocky III (1982), Rocky IV (1985) and Rocky V (1990).

Winkler moved into the director's chair, debuting with Guilty by Suspicion (1991), a drama (which he also scripted) about the Hollywood blacklist that starred Robert De Niro, which was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival. His second feature, a remake of Night and the City, also starred De Niro and was chosen as the closing feature for the 1992 New York Film Festival. Winkler fared excellently at the box office as the writer-director of the Sandra Bullock vehicle The Net (1995), which spawned a series of the same name debuting on the USA Network in 1998.

Life as a House (2001) made its world debut at the 2001 Toronto Film Festival and told the tale of a depressed dying man (Kevin Kline) who funnels his energies into rebuilding the dilapidated beach shack he inherited from his abusive father and, in the process, building bridges between himself and his disaffected son (Hayden Christensen). After this film received critical praise, Winkler re-teamed with Kline for the follow-up De-Lovely (2004), casting the actor as the lead in his biographical film about American composer Cole Porter, which centered on his unique relationship with his wife and muse (Ashley Judd) and was chosen as the closing night film at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival.

While his directorial career would last through 2006, Winkler continued to produce his share of films, including The Shipping News (2001), Enough (2002), the 2014 remake of The Gambler—he'd also produced James Toback's 1974 original—and his further return to the Rocky franchise with Rocky Balboa (2006) and the spin-offs Creed (2015), which was nominated for multiple awards including 6 NAACP Image Awards, winning 4, and Creed II (2018). His work with Scorsese continued on with The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), Silence (2016), and The Irishman (2019) which was Winkler's first collaboration with Netflix.

In 2019, Winkler published his autobiography, A Life in Movies: Stories from 50 years in Hollywood.

• Double Trouble (1967)
• Point Blank (1967) (Uncredited)
• Blue (1968)
• The Split (1968)
• They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969)
• Leo the Last (1970)
• The Strawberry Statement (1970)
• Believe in Me (1971)
• The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight (1971)
• The New Centurions (1972)
• Thumb Tripping (1972)
• The Mechanic (1972)
• Up the Sandbox (1972)
• Busting (1974)
• S*P*Y*S (1974)
• The Gambler (1974)
• Peeper (1974)
• Breakout (1975)
• Rocky (1976)
• Nickelodeon (1976)
• New York, New York (1977)
• Valentino (1977)
• Uncle Joe Shannon (1978)
• Rocky II (1979)
• Raging Bull (1980)
• True Confessions (1981)
• Rocky III (1982)
• Author! Author! (1982)
• The Right Stuff (1983)
• Rocky IV (1985)
• Revolution (1985)
• Scandal Sheet (1985) (TV movie)
• Round Midnight (1986)
• Betrayed (1988)
• Music Box (1989)
• Goodfellas (1990)
• Rocky V (1990)
• The Juror (1996)
• The Shipping News (2001)
• Enough (2002)
• The Net 2.0 (2006) (Direct-to-video)
• Trespass (2011)
• The Gambler (2014)
• Survivor (2015)
• Creed (2015)
• Silence (2016)
• Creed II (2018)
• The Irishman (2019)
• Creed III (2023)
• The Alto Knights (2025)

Executive producer

• Comes a Horseman (1978)
• The Net (1998−99) (Also writer)
• Rocky Balboa (2006)
• The Mechanic (2011)
• The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

As an actor

Thanks

• Winkler, Irwin. A Life in Movies: Stories from 50 years in Hollywood. New York, Abrams Press, 2019