HOLLYWOOD -- The Directors Guild of America today announced its nominations for outstanding directorial achievement in motion pictures, considered a forerunner of the Oscars.
Steven Spielberg was nominated for 'E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial,' Taylor Hackford for 'An Officer and a Gentleman,' Wolfgang Peterson for 'Das Boot,' Sydney Pollack for 'Tootsie' and Sir Richard Attenborough for 'Gandhi.'
Only twice in 35 years has the guild winner not also taken the Academy Award for best director. The excpetions were in 1972 when Francis Ford Coppola won the prize for 'The Godfather' but Bob Fosse took the Oscar for 'Cabaret' and in 1968 when Anthony Harvey won the guild trophy for 'Lion in Winter' but Carol Reed won the Oscar for 'Oliver!'
The winner of the Directors Guild of America award, voted by 6,700 members, will be announced March 12 at awards dinners held simultaneously in Hollywood and New York. Television nominations will be announced later.
It was the third Directors Guild nomination for Spielberg, 36, who has already taken the best director award from the National Society of Film Critics and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.
Spielberg was nominated in 1975 for 'Jaws,' in 1977 for 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind,' and last year for 'Raiders of the Lost Ark.'
Attenborough, 59, was nominated in 1969 for 'Oh! What a Lovely War,' and Pollack, 48, was nominated the same year for 'They Shoot Horses, Don't They?'
Peterson, 42, and Hackford, 37, are first-time Directors Guild of America nominees.
