Oliver Stone

William Oliver Stone (born September 15, 1946) is an American filmmaker. An acclaimed director who tackled subjects ranging from the Vietnam War and American politics to musical biopics and crime dramas, Stone has received numerous accolades including three Academy Awards (plus ten career nominations), a BAFTA Award, a Primetime Emmy, a Satellite Award, a Sant Jordi Award, three Jupiter Awards, three Independent Spirit Awards, and six Golden Globe Awards.

Stone was born in New York City and later briefly attended Yale University. In 1967, Stone enlisted in the United States Army during the Vietnam War. He served from 1967 to 1968 in the 25th Infantry and 1st Cavalry Divisions and was twice wounded in action. For his service, he received military honors including a Bronze Star with "V" Device for valor, Purple Heart with Oak Leaf Cluster (to denote two wounds), an Air Medal and the Combat Infantryman Badge. His service in Vietnam became the foundation for the stark portrayals of war and its aftermath in his work.

Stone began his career as a screenwriter for films such as Midnight Express (1978), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, Conan the Barbarian (1982) and Scarface (1983). He then rose to prominence as writer and director of the Vietnam War film dramas Platoon (1986) and Born on the Fourth of July (1989), receiving Academy Awards for Best Director for both films, the former of which also won Best Picture. He also directed Salvador (1986), Wall Street (1987) and its sequel Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010), The Doors (1991), JFK (1991), Heaven & Earth (1993), Natural Born Killers (1994), Nixon (1995), Any Given Sunday (1999), W. (2008) and Snowden (2016). Collectively, his films have grossed $1.3 billion worldwide.

Many of Stone's films focus on controversial American political issues during the late 20th century, and as such were considered contentious at the times of their releases. Stone has been critical of American foreign policy, which he considers to be driven by nationalist and imperialist agendas. Like his subject matter, Stone is a controversial figure in American filmmaking, with some critics accusing him of promoting conspiracy theories.

William Oliver Stone was born on September 15, 1946, at Doctors Hospital in New York City, the only child of Jacqueline (née Goddet) and Louis Stone (born Abraham Louis Silverstein). His parents met in his mother's hometown of Paris during World War II where his father, a U.S. Army colonel, served as a financial officer on General Eisenhower's staff. Upon his return to Manhattan after the war, Louis worked on Wall Street as a stockbroker and investment analyst, eventually becoming vice president of Shearson Lehman Brothers.

Stone's paternal great-grandparents were Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants from Poland. His grandfather, Joshua Silverstein, ran successful skirt-making businesses in New York City and New Jersey. The family changed its surname from Silverstein to Stone in the 1920s due to pervasive antisemitism in the United States. His aunt was author and editor Babette Rosmond; his cousins are writer Gene Stone and former chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission James Stone. Stone himself grew up in Manhattan and Stamford, Connecticut. While his American father was Jewish, his French mother was Roman Catholic, though both were non-practicing. Stone was raised in the Episcopal Church and now practices Buddhism.

Stone attended kindergarten through eighth grade at Trinity School in New York City before being sent to The Hill School, a college-preparatory boarding school in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. He spoke French as his first language, which led to some difficulties as an ESL learner during his early years at Trinity. His father paid him a quarter every week to write one to two pages on a theme; this inspired Stone's early love of writing.

Starting at age nine, his primary caretaker was a male nanny, Karlo Stojanac. A Yugoslavian Holocaust survivor, Stojanac was both openly gay and a socialist, uncommon traits in that time period. Stone later described his nanny as having a fluctuating gender identity, as well as suffering post-traumatic stress from his experiences in a concentration camp. Reflecting on their bond, Stone described their relationship as "extraordinarily close", and said that Stojanac "was my mentor in many ways. He took care of me and he loved me."

In 1962, while Stone was attending The Hill, his parents abruptly divorced, which shocked him. Following a court ruling that deemed his mother unfit, his father was granted sole custody. With his mother already frequently absent prior to the divorce, Stone was raised under the strong influence of his father, which may explain why father-son relationships are a recurring theme in his work.

In April 1967, Stone enlisted in the United States Army and requested combat duty in Vietnam. Upon arrival, he first served (from September 27, 1967 – February 23, 1968) as a infantryman with 2nd Platoon, B Company, 3rd Battalion, 22nd Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division. In October 1967, he was medevaced for the first time after being shot in the neck during a night ambush, a wound which nearly severed his jugular vein and carotid artery. "It was a miracle I survived the neck injury," he reflected in 2025. Later, while fighting with that same unit in the New Year's Battle of 1968, Stone was knocked unconscious and had his eardrum perforated by the concussive blast of a beehive round, which resulted in permanent deafness in that ear. (As he did not leave duty or receive medical treatment, this injury did not qualify for a Purple Heart. As a result, Stone often refers to himself as "twice wounded," referencing only the injuries for which he was hospitalized and received Purple Hearts). On January 15, 1968, Stone was wounded and evacuated from the 25th Infantry Division for the final time when, while attempting to aid other injured personnel, a satchel charge implanted in a tree detonated, causing a blast concussion and shrapnel wounds to his legs and buttocks.

In the 1990s, biographer James Riordan discovered correspondence from the Treasury Department of the American Consulate in Hong Kong dated 1968, revealing that Louis Stone had used his government connections to request a noncombat transfer for his son following his injuries. However, the letter stated that Oliver emphatically declined the offered support position with the CIA and emphasized his commitment to his military service.

Following a month-long hospital stay, Stone briefly served transitional duty as a military policeman in Saigon. He was then transferred to the 1st Cavalry Division, participating in long-range reconnaissance patrols, before being transferred to Troop D, 1st Squadron of the 9th Cavalry Regiment of the 1st Cav for the rest of his tour. While serving with that unit on August 21, 1968, Stone charged and killed a North Vietnamese sniper who had several squads pinned down during a crossfire firefight near My Khe beach (nicknamed "China Beach" by the U.S.). For that action, he was awarded the Bronze Star with "V" Device for "heroism in ground combat."

Following a voluntary three-month extension of his tour, Stone was separated from active duty on November 15, 1968, and (after five years of Individual Ready Reserve status) officially discharged from the Army on April 1, 1973, at the rank of Specialist 4. In addition to the Bronze Star, his military awards include the Purple Heart with Oak Leaf Cluster to denote two awards, the Air Medal, the Army Commendation Medal, Sharpshooter Badge with Rifle Bar, Marksman Badge with Auto Rifle Bar, the National Defense Service Medal, the Vietnam Service Medal with one Silver Service Star, the Republic of Vietnam Gallantry Cross with Unit Citation with Palm, two Overseas Service Bars, the Vietnam Campaign Medal and the Combat Infantryman Badge.

On June 30, 1969, the French news program Voila interviewed a then-unknown Stone while filming "on the street" interviews about the war in Central Park. In fluent French, he told them, "My name is Oliver Stone, I’m 22 years old, I’m from New York, and my mother is French from Paris. I served in Vietnam with the American Army for 15 months and I returned to the United States six months ago. It changed me. It changes a lot of boys." He added that drug use was rampant among American soldiers.

Following the war, Stone suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. His PTSD was compounded by a violent mugging he experienced in the East Village in the summer of 1969, during which he sustained defensive knife wounds. Stone has also described long-term physical complications from his military service, specifically combat induced hearing loss and tinnitus, minor discomfort from shrapnel still embedded in his body, and fertility issues he believes were caused by Agent Orange exposure. He commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War's conclusion by sharing his reflections during panel discussions at the Harvard Institute of Politics and San Diego State University's Center for War and Society and in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter.

Stone denied experiencing any hostility upon returning from Vietnam. Instead, he characterized the general attitude to veterans as indifferent, which contributed to his feelings of depression and isolation. In a 2020 BBC interview, he reflected that, despite his later success, he felt his experience as a combat veteran alienated him from both his generation and Hollywood.

Stone attended New York University on the G.I. Bill, graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in film in 1971, where his teachers included director and fellow NYU alumnus Martin Scorsese and where he had a small acting role in the comedy The Battle of Love's Return. In Scorsese's class, Stone made a short, well received 12-minute film about a disabled veteran, Last Year in Viet Nam. He later worked varied jobs as a taxi driver, PBS production assistant, messenger, and salesman before making his mark as a screenwriter.

In 1979, Stone was awarded his first Oscar, after adapting true-life prison story Midnight Express into the successful film of the same name for British director Alan Parker (the two men would later collaborate on the 1996 movie of stage musical Evita). The original author and subject of the film, Billy Hayes, said the film's depiction of prison conditions was accurate and that the "message of Midnight Express isn't, 'Don't go to Turkey. It's, 'Don't be an idiot like I was, and try to smuggle drugs.' " Stone later apologized to Turkey for over-dramatizing the script, while standing by the film's stark depiction of the brutality of Turkish prisons.

After his breakthrough, Stone continued his successful career as a screenwriter, most notably Brian De Palma's drug lord epic Scarface, loosely inspired by his own addiction to cocaine, which he successfully kicked while working on the screenplay. He also penned Year of the Dragon (co-written with Michael Cimino) featuring Mickey Rourke, before his career took off as a writer-director in 1986. Like his contemporary Michael Mann, Stone is unusual in having written or co-written most of the films he has directed. In 1986, Stone directed two films back to back: the critically acclaimed but commercially unsuccessful Salvador, shot largely in Mexico, and his long in-development Vietnam project Platoon, shot in the Philippines.

Platoon brought Stone's name to a much wider audience. It also kick-started a busy directing career which saw him direct nine films over the next decade. Platoon won rave reviews (Roger Ebert named it the best film of 1986 and later called it the ninth best film of the decade), massive commercial success, and Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director. In 2007, a film industry vote ranked it at number 83 in an American Film Institute "AFI's 100 Years ... 100 Movies" poll of the previous century's best American movies. British TV channel Channel 4 voted Platoon as the sixth greatest war film ever made. In 2019, Platoon was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

While Platoon was about Stone's own experience in combat, he followed it with two other films showing different perspectives of the Vietnam War. In 1989, he co-wrote and directed Born on the Fourth of July, based on the autobiography of Ron Kovic, a Marine who became an anti-war activist after being paralyzed in combat. The film was a critical success and received eight Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, and earned Stone his second Best Director Oscar. At the 47th Golden Globes, Stone became the first filmmaker to win Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Picture (as producer) for the same film (the only other filmmaker to achieve the same feat is Paul Thomas Anderson for One Battle After Another). It was also a commercial success, grossing $161 million against a budget of just $17.8 million to become the tenth highest-grossing film of that year. Heaven & Earth (1993) was the final film in his unofficial Vietnam trilogy, written and directed by Stone based on the memoirs of Le Ly Hayslip, a Vietnamese woman whose life was drastically changed by the war and its aftermath.

Immediately following the success of Platoon, Stone co-wrote and directed another hit, 1987's Wall Street, starring Charlie Sheen and Michael Douglas, who received the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as ruthless corporate raider Gordon Gekko. After Wall Street, Stone co-wrote and directed Talk Radio, based on Eric Bogosian's Pulitzer-nominated play. The film was nominated for the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival and earned Stone his third Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Director.

In 1990, Stone produced the Oscar-winning movie Reversal of Fortune. The following year, he co-wrote and directed The Doors. The film received criticism from former Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek and Jim Morrison's former girlfriend, Patricia Kennealy-Morrison, who was a consultant on the movie (she also makes a cameo appearance). However, she later wrote in her memoir Strange Days: My Life With and Without Jim Morrison that Stone ignored her feedback and proceeded with his own version of events. The other surviving former members of the band, John Densmore and Robby Krieger, also cooperated with the filming of The Doors, but Krieger distanced himself before the film's release. However, Densmore thought highly of the film, and celebrated its DVD release on a panel with Oliver Stone.

During the same year, Stone co-wrote and directed one of his most ambitious, controversial and successful films, JFK, which depicts the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, and the investigation by Jim Garrison (played by Kevin Costner), who believed that the assassination was part of a CIA conspiracy. The film was a huge commercial success and earned eight Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director. Stone also published an annotated version of the screenplay shortly after the film's release, noting, "I make my films like you're going to die if you miss the next minute. You better not go get popcorn." Due to public reaction to the film, Congress passed the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 ("JFK Records Act"), directing the National Archives and Records Administration to collect and house all assassination-related records and release them by 2017. The act also established the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), whose work was the subject of Stone's 2021 documentary miniseries JFK: Destiny Betrayed. On April 27, 1992, Stone testified before the House Government Operations Subcommittee on Legislation and National Affairs in support of the act's passage. Introducing Stone at the hearing, chairman Rep. John Conyers Jr. stated: "You are probably the reason that we're all here today. You've moved the country and your Congress to immediate activity."

In 1994, Stone co-wrote and directed Natural Born Killers, a violent crime film intended to satirize the modern media. The film had originally been based on a screenplay by Quentin Tarantino, but underwent significant rewriting by Stone, Richard Rutowski, and David Veloz. Before it was released, the MPAA gave the film an NC-17 rating; this caused Stone to cut four minutes of film footage to obtain an R rating (he eventually released the unrated version on VHS and DVD in 2001). The film was the recipient of the Grand Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival. That same year, Stone appeared in a cameo as himself in the presidential comedy Dave and produced The Joy Luck Club, the first major Hollywood film made by an Asian director and majority Asian cast about a contemporary Asian-American story.

Stone went on to co-write and direct the 1995 Richard Nixon biopic Nixon, which received Oscar nominations for the script, John Williams' score, Joan Allen's performance as Pat Nixon and Anthony Hopkins' portrayal of the title role. He also won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Television Movie the same year, as executive producer of HBO's Indictment: The McMartin Trial. In 1996, Stone produced the films Freeway and The People vs. Larry Flynt and was credited as co-writer of Evita, which was based on his original adaptation of the stage musical. He finished the decade by co-writing and directing the 1997 film noir U Turn and 1999's Any Given Sunday, a film about power struggles within an American football team.

After over more than a decade (1986–1999), wherein he wrote and directed a new film almost every year, Stone slowed his pace at the turn of the century. He first released his historical epic Alexander in 2004, but it was a notorious box office flop. He later re-edited it into a two-part, 3-hour 37-minute film Alexander Revisited: The Final Cut, which became one of the highest-selling catalog items from Warner Bros. He further refined the film and in 2014 released the two-part, 3-hour 26-minute Alexander: The Ultimate Cut. After Alexander, Stone directed World Trade Center, based on the true story of two PAPD policemen who were trapped in the rubble and survived the September 11 attacks. The film was a commercial success. Stone then wrote and directed the George W. Bush biopic W., which chronicles the president's life up until the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

In 2010, Stone directed his only sequel, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. Two years later, he directed the crime thriller Savages, based on the novel by Don Winslow.

In 2016, Stone directed Snowden, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as whistleblower Edward Snowden. The film received mixed reviews from critics and was not a commercial success. As of 2025, it remains Stone's final narrative feature film. On May 22, 2017, various industry papers announced that Stone was going to direct his first scripted television series about the Guantanamo detention camp for Weinstein Television. However, Stone quit the project after sexual misconduct allegations surfaced against Harvey Weinstein in October 2017 and it was never made.

In 2020, Stone announced his semi-retirement from film-making, though he still occasionally makes documentaries. In July of that same year, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt published his first memoir, Chasing the Light: Writing, Directing, and Surviving Platoon, Midnight Express, Scarface, Salvador, and the Movie Game, which chronicles his turbulent upbringing in New York City, volunteering for combat in Vietnam, and the trials and triumphs of moviemaking in the 1970s and '80s. The book, which ends on his Oscar-winning Platoon, was praised by The New York Times: "The Oliver Stone depicted in these pages – vulnerable, introspective, stubbornly tenacious and frequently heartbroken—may just be the most sympathetic character he's ever written... neatly sets the stage for the possibility of that rarest of Stone productions: a sequel." In 2024, Stone donated his archives to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

In 2026, Stone completed production on White Lies, which he has described as his final narrative feature as writer‑director. The film, an autobiographical inter-generational family drama starring Josh Hartnett, Willem Dafoe, Michael Douglas and Ellen Barkin, is characterized as a thematic departure from his earlier politically focused work.

In the 21st century, Stone increasingly shifted to making documentaries. His first, Comandante (2003), about Cuban leader Fidel Castro, was followed by two sequels: Looking for Fidel (2004) and Castro in Winter (2012). Also in 2003, Stone made Persona Non Grata, an HBO documentary on Israeli-Palestinian relations, in which he interviewed several notable Israeli leaders, including Ehud Barak, Benjamin Netanyahu and Shimon Peres, as well as Yasser Arafat, leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

In 2009 Stone completed a feature-length documentary, South of the Border, about the rise of left-wing governments in Latin America, featuring seven presidents: Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, Bolivia's Evo Morales, Ecuador's Rafael Correa, Cuba's Raúl Castro, the Kirchners of Argentina, Brazil's Lula da Silva, and Paraguay's Fernando Lugo, all of whom are critical of US foreign policy in South America. Stone hoped the film would get the rest of the Western world to rethink socialist policies in South America, particularly as it was being applied by Venezuela's Hugo Chávez. Chávez joined Stone for the premiere of the documentary at the Venice International Film Festival in September 2009. Stone defended his decision not to interview Chávez's opponents, stating that oppositional statements and TV clips were scattered through the documentary and that the documentary was an attempt to right a balance of heavily negative coverage. He praised Chávez as a leader of the Bolivarian Revolution, a movement for social transformation in Latin America, and also praised the six other presidents in the film. The documentary was also released in several cities in the United States and Europe in the mid-2010.

In 2012, the documentary miniseries Oliver Stone's Untold History of the United States premiered on Showtime, Stone co-wrote, directed, produced, and narrated the series, having worked on it since 2008 with co-writers American University historian Peter J. Kuznick and British screenwriter Matt Graham. The 10-part series was supplemented by a 750-page companion book of the same name, also written by Stone and Kuznick, published on October 30, 2012, by Simon & Schuster. Stone described the project as "the most ambitious thing I've ever done. Certainly in documentary form, and perhaps in fiction, feature form." The project received positive reviews from former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, The Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, and reviewers from IndieWire, San Francisco Chronicle, and Newsday. Hudson Institute adjunct fellow historian Ronald Radosh accused the series of historical revisionism. Stone defended the program's accuracy to TV host Tavis Smiley by explaining that the series had been vetted three times by different teams of fact checkers.

Stone was interviewed in Boris Malagurski's documentary film The Weight of Chains 2 (2014), which deals with neoliberal reforms in the Balkans.

On March 5, 2014, Stone and teleSUR premiered the documentary film Mi amigo Hugo (My Friend Hugo), a documentary about Venezuela's late president, Hugo Chávez, one year after his death. The film was described by Stone as a "spiritual answer" and tribute to Chávez.

On September 15, 2008, Stone was named the artistic director of New York University's Tisch School of the Arts Asia in Singapore. Stone is also an honorary board member of the nonprofit organizations Veterans for Peace and The National Veterans Foundation.

In November 1997, Stone won an episode of the game show Jeopardy! during "Power Players" theme week, playing on behalf of charity Rock the Vote. As of 2025, that makes him one of only three Academy Award winners who have also won Jeopardy! Calling it one of the most fun experiences of his career, he later admitted that he was high on ecstasy during the game.

Stone has contributed forewords or introductions to multiple non-fiction books, including Last Word: My Indictment of the CIA in the Murder of JFK by Mark Lane,The JFK Assassination, A Portrait of Vietnam by Lou Dematteis, Reclaiming Parkland: Tom Hanks, Vincent Bugliosi, and the JFK Assassination in the New Hollywood, The Plot to Overthrow Venezuela: How the US is Orchestrating a Coup for Oil, JFK: The Last Dissenting Witness and JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy, which features a quote from Stone on its cover that it "blows the lid right off our 'Official History.'" He has also occasionally written film and literary criticism, beginning in 1972 with a freelance review of Jean Luc-Godard's Breathless for The Village Voice. For The New York Times, he reviewed The Last Emperor and Tom Clancy's novel Executive Orders and, in 1998, wrote an article about conspiracies for John F. Kennedy Jr.'s political magazine George.

In 2022, he appeared in the documentary Theaters of War, discussing the role of the military in Hollywood. Stone was also interviewed in the 2021 ESPN 30 for 30 documentary Once Upon a Time in Queens about the 1986 New York Mets.

Many of Stone's films focus on controversial American political issues during the late 20th century, and as such were considered contentious at the times of their releases. Known for a bold editing style, his films often combine different camera and film formats within a single scene, as demonstrated in JFK (1991), Natural Born Killers (1994) and Nixon (1995). Roger Ebert called Stone "a filmmaker of feverish energy and limitless technical skills, able to assemble a bewildering array of facts and fancies and compose them into a film without getting bogged down." Owen Gleiberman, who named Nixon the best film of 1995, praised Stone as the most thrilling filmmaker of his era, writing that his movies don't merely entertain, but emotionally and psychologically absorb the audience, similar to the intensity of drugs.

According to Quentin Tarantino, Stone's films are assertive and impactful, meant to make audiences think deeply about their subjects. He compared him to Stanley Kramer, a socially conscious filmmaker from the 1950s and ’60s, except, "Kramer was kind of a clumsy filmmaker and Oliver Stone is cinematically brilliant." Two of Tarantino's favorite films, Year of the Dragon (1985) and 8 Million Ways to Die (1986), were written by Stone. Filmmakers Ari Aster and Christopher Nolan have also cited Stone as an influence on their directing. In a retrospective essay, writer and professor Kiese Laymon argued that Stone constantly subverted portrayals of white saviorism and American masculinity in his filmography, while The Washington Post once described him as "Costa-Gavras meets Frank Capra [...] as fluent with polemic as he is with throat-catching emotion."

Stone was ranked #12 on Vulture's 100 Best Screenwriters of All-Time and #43 on Entertainment Weekly's 50 Greatest Directors, the latter calling him "Orson Welles with a sociopolitical ax to grind."

Stone has listed Luis Buñuel, Jean-Luc Godard and Claude Chabrol as early film-making heroes, as well as fellow combat veteran turned director Samuel Fuller. Stone has particularly cited Greek-French director Costa-Gavras, to whom he is often compared, as a major influence on his cinematic approach. While studying at NYU, Stone first saw the political thriller Z (1969) when Costa-Gavras and actor Yves Montand visited his film class, and that experience had a significant impact on Stone's admiration for politically engaged filmmaking. When later interviewing Costa-Gavras at the 2025 Los Angeles Greek Film Festival, Stone remembered that visit as one of the most significant events of his life.

In his memoir Chasing the Light, Stone additionally described the profound influence of Elia Kazan's films on his work, as well as the parallels he saw between their life experiences. He also detailed a significant friendship with one of his other idols, Billy Wilder, during the final two decades of Wilder's life. Stone is a longtime friend of fellow New York filmmaker Spike Lee, and is given special thanks in the credits of Lee's film Malcolm X.

Stone has been married three times, first to Najwa Sarkis Stone, a United Nations protocol attache, on May 22, 1971. They divorced in 1977. He then married Elizabeth Burkit Cox, an assistant in film production, on June 7, 1981. They had two sons, Sean (b. 1984, who took the middle name Ali upon conversion to Islam) and Michael Jack (b. 1991). As a child, Sean acted in supporting roles in several of his father's films, and later worked for the Russia state media company RT America as a program host from 2015 to 2022. Oliver and Elizabeth divorced in 1993. Stone also has a daughter, Tara Chong Stone (b. 1995) with his wife, Chong son Chong (Korean: 정순중, Westernized as Sun-jung Jung), to whom he has been married since 1996. He credits the success of that marriage to his wife being his opposite politically, culturally and spiritually (she is a Christian conservative Republican, originally from South Korea). All of Stone's children had cameos in his films, first as babies and continuing at various ages, though only Any Given Sunday features all three. Stone and his family live in Los Angeles and he holds dual U.S. and French citizenship.

Stone has been a practicing Buddhist since 1993. He was given the Dharma name Minh Duc after receiving the five precepts from a Buddhist monk. Stone is also mentioned in Pulitzer Prize-winning American author Lawrence Wright's book Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief as having been a member of Scientology for about a month, due to the influence of a girlfriend: "It was like going to college and reading Dale Carnegie, something you do to find yourself." In 1997, Stone was one of 34 celebrities to sign an open letter to then-German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, published as a newspaper advertisement in the International Herald Tribune, which protested against the treatment of Scientologists in Germany and compared it to the Nazis' oppression of Jews in the 1930s. In 2003, Stone was a signatory of the third Humanist Manifesto.

Jeffrey Tayler has described Stone as having left-wing political views. Iranian state media referred to him as an "anti-American system" director. According to the FEC, he has donated over $56,000 to various Democratic candidates and PACs since 1989. (His sole donation to a Republican was to James E. Rogan in 2000.) In a December 2024 podcast interview, Stone defined himself as an independent opposed to neoconservatism and a "real liberal" influenced by John Stuart Mill rather than a Democrat, citing a perceived right-wing shift in the Democratic Party.

Stone has also drawn attention for his opinions on controversial world leaders such as Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Hugo Chávez and Vladimir Putin. In Showtime's The Putin Interviews, Stone called Joseph Stalin the biggest villain in history, stating that Stalin ruined the legacy of Communism due to his atrocities. Stone has also endorsed the works of author and United States foreign policy critic William Blum, saying that his books should be taught in schools and universities.

Stone voted for Ronald Reagan in the 1980 presidential election, but his travels across Central America left him disillusioned with the president's policies by the time of Reagan's 1984 reelection. Stone later campaigned for Michael Dukakis in the 1988 presidential election. In 1992, he served as a delegate for Jerry Brown's campaign in the Democratic Party presidential primaries and spoke at that year's Democratic National Convention. In an interview with Bill Maher, Stone claimed that he met President Bill Clinton at a private meeting at the White House in 1995, but that Clinton kept the visit off the official agenda due to Stone's controversial reputation.

Stone once suggested there might be a link between the September 11 attacks and the controversies of the 2000 election. He also reflected that the day the U.S. Supreme Court ended the Florida recount in the 2000 presidential election was "the worst moment, for me, of this century," as he supported Al Gore and believes that George W. Bush was the worst president in U.S. history.

Stone endorsed Democratic candidate John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election.

In 2012, Stone endorsed Ron Paul for the Republican nomination for president, citing his support for a non-interventionist foreign policy. He later clarified that he only supported Ron Paul in the Republican primary, but would not vote for him in the general election due to his domestic policy stances. According to Entertainment Weekly, Stone voted for Barack Obama as President of the United States in both the 2008 and 2012 elections. He praised Obama for his intelligence and calm handling of crises. However, at the 2017 San Sebastián film festival, Stone added that many Americans had become disillusioned with Obama's foreign policy, having originally thought he would be "a man of great integrity" but instead became disappointed that Obama continued many aspects of the Bush-era policy and created a massive global security surveillance state.

In March 2016, Stone wrote on The Huffington Post of his support for Vermont U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders for the 2016 Democratic nomination. After Sanders failed to secure the nomination, Stone voted for Green Party candidate Jill Stein for president. He added that, as a progressive leftist, he felt forced to vote third party, as he believed neoconservatives like Hillary Clinton had taken over the Democratic Party.

Oliver Stone is a vocal supporter of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. In June 2012, Stone signed a petition backing Assange's bid for political asylum. The following August, he co-authored an op-ed in The New York Times with filmmaker Michael Moore, underscoring the importance of WikiLeaks and the broader implications for free speech. In April 2013, he visited Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, stating that most Americans underestimate the significance of Assange's work. He also criticized the documentary We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks and the film The Fifth Estate, arguing that Assange was being unfairly targeted despite his contributions to press freedom.

In June 2013, Stone and numerous other celebrities appeared in a video showing support for Chelsea Manning.

Stone has had an interest in Latin America since the 1980s, when he directed Salvador, and later returned to make his documentary South of the Border about the left-leaning movements that had been taking hold in the region. He expressed the view that those movements were a positive step toward political and economic autonomy for the region. He supported Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez and admired the Colombian militant group FARC. Stone skipped the 68th Academy Awards ceremony, where his film Nixon received four nominations, to visit the Zapatistas of southern Mexico. Joking that he had no Oscar statuettes to give, guerrilla leader Subcomandante Marcos presented Stone with a tobacco pipe instead.

Stone has also criticized the U.S.-supported Operation Condor, a state terror operation that carried out assassinations and disappearances in support of South America's right-wing dictatorships in Argentina (see Dirty War), Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay.

In the early 1980s, Stone visited the Soviet Union for the first time to interview anti-Communist dissidents as research for a screenplay. He also used the trip to covertly smuggle Western goods into the USSR on behalf of a French human rights organization. His activities eventually drew the attention of Soviet authorities and he was briefly detained in Tbilisi, Georgia before being allowed to leave the country. The resulting screenplay, Defiance, was never made.

In December 2014, Stone made statements supporting the Russian government's narrative on Ukraine, portraying the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution of Dignity as a CIA plot. He also rejected the claim that former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych (overthrown as a result of that revolution) was responsible for the killing of protesters, and that Yanukovych was the legitimate president forced to leave Ukraine by "well-armed, neo-Nazi radicals." He added that the United States was interfering in the domestic policy of Ukraine.

Following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Stone wrote, "Although the United States has many wars of aggression on its conscience, it doesn't justify Mr. Putin's aggression in Ukraine. A dozen wrongs don't make a right. Russia was wrong to invade," an opinion he reiterated in March 2025. He also continued to blame the source of the conflict on the U.S. and NATO, emphasizing his fear of a potential nuclear war and accusing the U.S. of seeking to dominate the world. In a May 2023 interview discussing Nuclear Now, Stone declined to comment on Russia's foreign policy, but praised the country (along with China) as a leader in nuclear energy, and added that Putin was a great leader for his country who had support from his citizens.

In a June 2017 interview with The Nation to promote his documentary on Vladimir Putin, Stone rejected the narrative of the United States' intelligence agencies that Russia sought to influence the 2016 presidential election. Stone accused the CIA, FBI, and NSA of cooking the intelligence. He added that the Israeli lobby AIPAC and billionaires such as Sheldon Adelson and the Koch brothers had more influence on American elections than Russia.

Russia passed a law in 2013 banning alleged "gay propaganda" to minors, which has been criticized as being used for a crackdown on LGBTQ support. In a 2019 interview with Putin, Stone commented that the law might be sensible, but later denied being homophobic. During the COVID pandemic, Stone took the Sputnik V vaccine for the COVID-19 virus while filming a documentary in Russia and the Pfizer vaccine upon his return to the United States, calling himself "a pin cushion for American–Russian peace relations."

Stone has called Saudi Arabia a major destabilizer in the Middle East. He also criticized the foreign policy of the United States, condemning the U.S. role in conflicts across Iraq, Syria, and Libya, and expressing frustration that the American public appears indifferent to the region's ongoing turmoil caused by those interventions. Stone has also been critical of Israel's foreign policy, particularly during the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu, whom he has interviewed. In March 2002, Stone was filming a documentary in the West Bank when Operation Defensive Shield was launched. He and his crew were forced to flee Ramallah with assistance from the Canadian government. Since the start of the Israel–Gaza war, Stone has been outspoken against purported Israeli war crimes and has alleged that Hollywood "destroys" those in the entertainment industry who take a pro-Palestinian stance.

In his foreword to the 2025 book Syria: Anatomy of Regime Change, Stone argued that U.S. policy in the Middle East reflects a neo‑colonial approach that undermines local cultures and severely harms civilian populations. He also predicted that those aggressive policies would ultimately lead to war with Iran.

Under Stone's direction, these actors have received Academy Award nominations (and one win) for their performances in their respective roles.

Commander of the Order of Intellectual Merit (Morocco, 2003)

2007: Lifetime Achievement Award of Zurich Film Festival

On July 4, 2024, Stone was awarded the rank of Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters, the highest civilian honor in France, for cultural contributions to both the country and the film industry. He was previously awarded the rank of Chevalier in 1992.