Ron Howard Wins Top Director Award Although Snubbed By Oscars, Director Honored For ‘Apollo 13’

Oscar, we have a problem.

In a move that brings added suspense to this year’s Academy Awards race, Ron Howard has captured the Directors Guild of America’s top award for feature films for his directorial work on the Tom Hanks space thriller “Apollo 13.”

Howard was overlooked by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences when it handed out nominations for best director earlier this year, but his film about NASA’s rescue of the Apollo 13 astronauts is in the running for best picture.

The red-haired, shy-smiling Howard, long a familiar figure to American television viewers for his childhood role in “The Andy Griffith Show” and now a major director of big-budget films, becomes only the fourth person snubbed by the academy to receive the Directors Guild’s top film award.

One of those exceptions was Steven Spielberg, who in 1985 won a Directors Guild award for “The Color Purple” while the Oscar went to Sydney Pollack for “Out of Africa.” Coincidentally, Howard was nominated by the DGA that year for “Cocoon.”

Howard’s victory came against strong rivals: Mel Gibson (“Braveheart”), Mike Figgis (“Leaving Las Vegas”), Ang Lee (“Sense and Sensibility”) and Michael Radford (“The Postman”).

The Directors Guild award is often an accurate predictor of best directing Oscars. Howard’s win Saturday night, Hollywood insiders say, is further indication there is no huge favorite like “Forrest Gump” last year and “Schindller’s List” the year before.

Had actor-director Gibson, for instance, walked off with the Director Guild award, many would have tabbed him as a front-runner for an Oscar.

In the Academy Awards, Gibson will go up against Figgis, Radford, Chris Noonan (“Babe”) and Tim Robbins (“Dead Man Walking”). Like Howard, Lee was passed over for a nomination by the academy, but his Jane Austen costume romance, “Sense and Sensibility,” is up for best picture.