As his parents died in the nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz Jan Tomás became an orphan very early on. Later he studied direction at the School of Cinema in Prague. In his Czechoslovakian films Black Peter, The Loves of a Blonde and The Firemen's Ball, he created his own style of comedy. 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 the difficulties he filmed there Taking Off and achieved his fame later with One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest adapted from the novel of Ken Kesey and which not only won five Oscars including one for direction. Other important films of Milos Forman were the musical Hair and certainly his biography of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Amadeus, which won eight Oscars.


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). Awarded fourth annual John Huston Award for Artists Rights by the Artists Rights Foundation. [1997] First name is pronounced "Mee-losh." Brother of Pavel Forman. Is currently director of Columbia University's film division. He takes sabbatical years for filmmaking. Member of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival in 1972. He was hand-picked by Michael Crichton to direct Disclosure (1994) but subsequently left the project due to creative differences with Crichton. One of only three living directors who have directed two films that have won the Academy Award for best picture. The others are Francis Coppola and Clint Eastwood. Is one of 7 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).