- He is best friends with fellow Mexican directors Alfonso Cuarón and Guillermo del Toro. They often support each other, and are known in the film industry as "The Three Amigos".
- Has directed ten Academy Award-nominated performances: Michael Keaton, Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Naomi Watts, Edward Norton, Benicio Del Toro, Adriana Barraza, Rinko Kikuchi, Emma Stone and Javier Bardem. DiCaprio won for his performance in The Revenant (2015).
- As of 2023, all of his full-length feature films received at least one Oscar nomination.
- First Mexican citizen to receive an Academy Award nomination as Best Director.
- On his acceptance speech for his [error], Iñárritu said that working with Leonardo DiCaprio was his best experience of his life.
- He, Alfonso Cuarón, and Guillermo del Toro are the only Mexican winners of the Best Director Oscar. He was the first Mexican to be nominated. He is one of 3 directors who have won back-to-back.
- Was a DJ at the Mexican radio station WFM and later became a director.
- Crossing the Atlantic Ocean on a cargo ship at the age of 17 and 19 had a great influence on him as a filmmaker.
- He is among an elite group of directors who have won Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay (Original/Adapted) for the same film. In 2015 he won all three for Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014). The others are Francis Ford Coppola, Leo McCarey, Billy Wilder, James L. Brooks, Peter Jackson, and Joel Coen and Ethan Coen.
- As a musician, he scored six Mexican films in the late 1980s.
- Andrei Rublev (1966) is his all-time favorite film.
- Was thirty-seven years old when he directed his first feature film.
- In 2007 at the 79th Academy Awards, he was one of ten Mexican Oscar nominees. The others were Adriana Barraza, Guillermo Arriaga, Guillermo del Toro, Alfonso Cuarón, Guillermo Navarro, Emmanuel Lubezki, Eugenio Caballero, Alex Rodríguez and Fernando Cámara.
- Studied filmmaking under Polish director Ludwik Margules.
- One of three people to win back-to-back Oscars for Best Director (the others are: John Ford and Joseph L. Mankiewicz). Iñárritu is the first to do so since Manckiewicz in 1950 and 51. Lewis Milestone also won two years in a row (1929 and 1930), however, there were two Oscar ceremonies in 1930. Milestone won an Oscar for Best Director in the second award show of that year, while Frank Lloyd won in the first.
- Is one of nine directors to have won the Golden Globe, Director's Guild, BAFTA, and Oscar for the same film, achieving this feat for The Revenant (2015).
- Was the youngest child of seven siblings.
- He has directed three films that have been nominated for the Best Picture Oscar: Babel (2006), Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014) and The Revenant (2015). Birdman won in the category.
- First Mexican director to win the Best Director award ("Prix de la mise en scene") at the Cannes Film Festival (2006).
- Became the first person to win the DGA Award for Feature Film two years in a row, first for Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014) and then for The Revenant (2015).
- The first non-white Director to win consecutive Oscars for Best Director.
- Member of the Official Competition jury at the 64th Venice International Film Festival in 2007.
- Children: Maria Eladia and Eliseo.
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