There comes a point when an A-list celebrity may ask him or herself, “Who is the best director I can work with?” Sometimes the answer is, “I am.” Projects by actor-directors throughout film history have yielded mixed results, ranging from Oscar wins and financial successes to self-indulgent vanity projects.
“Arrested Development” star Jason Bateman told his agent that his acting career is simply a stepping stone on the way to directing. The result of this effort was “Bad Words,” Bateman’s directorial debut. He helmed it not just to tell an offbeat indie comedy without studio interference, but also to play a character opposite to his usual nebbish pushovers.
In a similar scenario, Joseph Gordon Levitt, known for playing the charming nice guy, took on an unlikely role in last year’s critical and commercial success “Don Jon,” a sexy independent comedy with a smart message about modern romance, directed by Gordon Levitt himself.
Yet probably the best example of this directing method is Clint Eastwood’s “Unforgiven,” which was a revisionist character study of the heroic cowboy stereotype for which Eastwood became famous as a rising actor.
However, not all actors want to showcase their acting in their directorial projects. While “The Town” and “Argo” do not demonstrate a huge departure in Ben Affleck’s acting style, viewers can see his confident direction in those films as well as in “Gone Baby Gone,” the first film Affleck directed.
Similarly, George Clooney has shown that he has an eye for stylistic flair with films such as “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind” and “Good Night, and Good Luck.”
Keanu Reeves made “The Man of Tai Chi” for genre aficionados to showcase amazingly choreographed martial art fights. Though he received help from Evan Goldberg, Seth Rogen made a killer co-directorial debut last summer with “This is the End,” which is one of the best comedies in recent memory.
We can list great successes, but sometimes a great actor does not always make the best director — self-indulgent style pervades many such failed efforts. James Franco’s experimental films “As I Lay Dying” and “Broken Tower,” the latter of which was made as his NYU graduate thesis, were critically panned.
Before “The Lone Ranger,” Johnny Depp played a Native American in his 1997 directorial debut “The Brave,” a film that has not been released on DVD in the United States thanks to bad press from the Cannes Film Festival that year. Even the aforementioned Eastwood fails on occasion — the film “Hereafter” felt like a passion project gone horribly wrong.
Yet celebrities continue to dabble in directing. In the next year, Russell Crowe, Ryan Gosling and Angelina Jolie will be joining the ranks of actors-turned-directors. It seems that some celebrities wish to point the limelight rather than simply stand in it.
A version of this article appeared in the Thursday, April 10 print edition. Zack Grullon is a staff writer. Email him at [email protected].
