Actors who direct

Daniel Brizuela                                                                                                                                5/20/12

Actors turned directors.

            Since films first started one thing in particular has not changed in the over one hundred years since it first started. That being actors who also direct their own movies, whether they’re in it as the main character, a secondary character, or just cameo to not being in them at all.

            Most of the most famous films ever made were directed by actors turned directors, whether they’ve been Oscar winners, huge blockbusters, or just plainly critically acclaimed. Some directors have however quit acting and just direct while some take time off from either one until the time is right.

            One of cinema’s greatest actor-directors was silent film star Charlie Chaplin who first acted in 1914s Making a Living. Chaplin’s first directorial job came in late April of that same year after making a dozen short films with Twenty Minutes of Love, which he also wrote. After that, most of the films he worked on he directed himself which turned out to be loved and iconic such as The Kid, City Lights, and his first all sound film in 1940 The Great Dictator.

            Another great actor turned director is former western actor Clint Eastwood, who directed two Best Picture winning films. Clint started out in mid-to-late 1950s monster films as extras then turning to the show Rawhide in a supporting role in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s. His breakthrough hit came when Sergio Leone cast him in The Man with No Name trilogy in the mid-to-late ‘60s of spaghetti westerns, which made him a bigger star and brought him to the attention of Don Siegel who cast him in numerous films, such as Coogan’s Bluff and Dirty Harry. It was from Leone and Siegel that Eastwood learned what it takes to direct which lead to his directorial debut with 1971s Play Misty for Me. Since then, Eastwood has directed most of the films he starred in and some he didn’t star in such as Pale Rider, J. Edgar, Mystic River, Sudden Impact, and his two Best Picture winning films 1992s Unforgiven and 2004s Million Dollar Baby.

            Other acting directors and the films they directed include Woody Allen with Annie Hall and Midnight in Paris, Sylvester Stallone with Rocky II and The Expendables, Ben Affleck with Gone Baby Gone and The Town, Orson Welles with Citizen Kane and Touch of Evil, Sofia Coppola with Lost in Translation and Marie Antoinette, Jodie Foster with Little Man Tate and The Beaver, and others like Mel Gibson, Ben Stiller, Kevin Bacon, and many more. All of them have directed films that have earned great praise, nominated and/or win Oscars, and become huge blockbusters.