Billy Wilder was an American filmmaker and screenwriter. Born in Sucha Beskidzka, at the time in Austria-Hungary (now Poland), Wilder's career in Hollywood spanned five decades, and he is regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of classical Hollywood cinema. He received seven Academy Awards (among 21 nominations), a BAFTA Award, the Cannes Film Festival's Palme d'Or and two Golden Globe Awards.
In 1916, when Wilder was ten years old, his family moved from Galicia to Vienna, where he worked as a journalist instead of attending university. Wilder's career as a screenwriter started in Berlin, where he relocated in his early adulthood. The rise of the Nazi Party and antisemitism in Germany saw him move to Paris. He then moved to Hollywood in 1934, and had a major hit when he, Charles Brackett and Walter Reisch wrote the screenplay for the Academy Award-nominated film Ninotchka (1939). Wilder established his directorial reputation and received his first nomination for the Academy Award for Best Director with Double Indemnity (1944), a film noir based on the novel by James M. Cain with a screenplay by Wilder and Raymond Chandler.