Joseph Leo Mankiewicz (/ˈmæŋkəwɪts/ MANG-kə-wits; February 11, 1909 – February 5, 1993) was an American filmmaker. A four-time Academy Award winner, he is best known for his witty and literate dialogue and his preference for voice-over narration and narrative flashbacks. Also known as an actor's director, Mankiewicz directed several prominent actors, including Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart and Elizabeth Taylor, to several of their memorable onscreen performances.

Born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Mankiewicz studied at Columbia University and graduated in 1928. He moved overseas to Europe, where he worked as a foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune and translated German intertitles into English for UFA. On the advice of his screenwriter brother Herman, Mankiewicz moved back to the United States, and was hired by Paramount Pictures as a dialogue writer. He then became a screenwriter, writing for numerous films starring Jack Oakie. He next moved to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), where he served as a producer for several films, including The Philadelphia Story (1940) and Woman of the Year (1942). Mankiewicz left MGM after a dispute with Louis B. Mayer.

In 1944, Mankiewicz began working for Twentieth Century-Fox, where he produced The Keys of the Kingdom (1944). He made his directorial debut with Dragonwyck (1946) after Ernst Lubitsch had dropped out due to illness. Mankiewicz remained at Twentieth Century-Fox, directing a broad range of genre films. Consecutively, in 1950 and 1951, he won two Academy Awards each for writing and directing A Letter to Three Wives (1949) and All About Eve (1950). In 1953, Mankiewicz formed his own production company Figaro, where he independently produced, as well as wrote and directed, The Barefoot Contessa (1954) and The Quiet American (1958).

In 1961, Mankiewicz took over direction from Rouben Mamoulian for Cleopatra (1963). The production was beset with numerous difficulties, including a heavily publicized extramarital affair between the film's stars Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Relatively late into the production, Darryl F. Zanuck reassumed control of Twentieth Century-Fox as studio president and briefly fired Mankiewicz for the film's excessive production overruns. Released in 1963, Cleopatra became the year's highest-grossing film and earned mixed reviews from film critics. Mankiewicz's reputation suffered, and he did not return to direct another film until The Honey Pot (1967).

Mankiewicz then directed There Was a Crooked Man... (1970) and the documentary King: A Filmed Record... Montgomery to Memphis (1972), sharing credit with Sidney Lumet on the latter film. His final film Sleuth (1972), starring Michael Caine and Laurence Olivier, earned Mankiewicz his fourth and final Oscar nomination as Best Director. In 1993, Mankiewicz died in Bedford, New York, at the age of 83.

Mankiewicz was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, to Franz Mankiewicz (died 1941) and Johanna Blumenau, Jewish emigrants from Germany and Courland, respectively. His siblings were Herman J. Mankiewicz (1897–1953) and Erna Stenbuck (née Mankiewicz, 1901–1979). At age four, Joseph moved with his family to New York City, and graduated in 1924 from Stuyvesant High School. He followed his brother Herman to Columbia University, where he initially wanted to be a psychiatrist. Mankiewicz once stated, "I took a pre-med course at Columbia. Then came the part where you disembowel frogs and earthworms, which horrified and nauseated me. But what really finished me was physics." Mankiewicz failed the course, and switched his major to English and wrote for the Columbia Daily Spectator. He graduated in 1928 and moved to Germany. There, he intended to enroll in the University of Berlin and finish at Oxford for a potential career in pedagogy.

However, Mankiewicz abandoned these plans, and was hired as an assistant correspondent for the Chicago Tribune. Sigrid Schultz, the Berlin bureau chief for the Tribune, gave Mankiewicz his first assignment, which was to interview explorer Umberto Nobile. Mankiewicz earned another job, translating film intertitles from German to English for UFA, and worked a third job as a stringer for the Variety trade magazine. He relocated to Paris, which Mankiewicz described as the "three most miserable months of my life." After receiving a despondent letter from his brother, Herman encouraged Joseph to move to Hollywood.

In 1929, Joseph was hired by Paramount Pictures, becoming the studio's youngest hired staff writer at the age of 20. Within eight weeks, Joseph wrote titles for 1929's The Dummy (with his brother Herman), The Man I Love, and Thunderbolt. David O. Selznick, then an assistant to Paramount general manager B. P. Schulberg, proposed that Joseph write the dialogue to Fast Company (1929), an adaptation of the 1928 play Elmer The Great by George M. Cohan and Ring Lardner. Mankiewicz's name later appeared in the Los Angeles Record's 1929 list of the ten best dialogue writers. The recognition earned Mankiewicz the assignment of writing several films, which starred Jack Oakie.