Do you think that the men who won the Best Director Academy Award end up living longer than average lives? To answer that question I've gone through all the men who won the Best Director Academy Award and calculated out their average lifespan.
Only the men who won the Oscar for Best Director who have passed away were used in the study. Also directors like Frank Capra who won the Best Director Academy Award multiple times were only counted once.
In total, there are 34 men (only one woman has ever won Best Director - Katheryn Bigelow for "Hurt Locker" and she is still alive and pictured below) who won the Best Director Academy Award and have passed away. Do you think the 34 men lived longer than average lifespans for a man due to their winning the Academy Award?
In theory, winning such a prestigious award should give a man a huge boost in life and help him to live a longer lifespan than average. Certainly winning an Academy Award virtually guarantees a director that he will be much richer than the average man and studies have shown that wealthier men live longer than average but is that true for Academy Award winners?
Does all that add up to a longer than average lifespan? The answer is yes it does.
Do Best Director Academy Award Winners Live Longer than Average Lives?
- Average lifespan of a man in the United States is 76.9 years
- Average lifespan of a Best Director Academy Award winner is 78.32 years
The 34 men in the study who won the Best Director Academy Award and have passed away lived to an average age of 78.32 years vs 76.9 years average life expectancy of a man in the United States today. That's almost a full 1.5 years longer than the average man for the Academy Award winners.
A few notes. Life expectancy for a man in the United States has risen over the years and many of the Best Directors in the study died when life spans for men were less. But survivor-ship bias is in full effect here as all the men who won the Best Director award survived well into adulthood while some males in the overall life expectancy of 76.9 years did not. Some male babies and boys do not reach adulthood while all the Academy Award winners did.
For the men in the study I rounded off their ages. If a man was 80 years old and 180 days I counted him as 80 years old. If a man was 80 years old and 190 days I counted hims as 81 years old.
The oldest man who won the Best Director Academy Award and passed away is 96 years for Billy Wilder. The youngest age a man who won the award passed away at is 54 years for Anthony Minghela.
There are three Best Director winners who are still alive who are well beyond the average age. Clint Eastwood is 87 years old while Milos Forman and Robert Benton are both 85. Counting those three directors in the study the average age moves up to 78.9 which is a full 2 years more than the average lifespan for a man.
The results of the study are pretty clear. Winning the Academy Award for Best Director does increase the average lifespan of the man who wins the Oscar.
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