From acting to action! Directorial debuts of movie stars

In some ways, "Ordinary People" gets a bad rap because of its Oscars success. If Robert Redford’s first film hadn’t “stolen” the Best Picture award from "Raging Bull," it might be more appreciated for the powerful character study that it is. The film, about a family coping with the death of a teenage son, isn’t flashy aesthetically, but Redford gets powerful performances from the cast, particularly a chilling Mary Tyler Moore. Timothy Hutton is as good as you could ever expect from a young actor, and it’s Judd Hirsch’s best cinematic work (until his extremely subtle work in "Independence Day"). With Moore and Hirsch, you could argue that "Ordinary People" went a long way to remove the stigma against TV actors in serious movies.

Sometimes an actor-director’s first film is a labor of love they’ve wanted to make for years. Other times an actor-director just wants to make a film, any film, which appears to be the case for Ed Norton and "Keeping The Faith." There’s nothing particularly wrong with this story about a love triangle between a priest, a rabbi, and a...Scientologist? No, just Jenna Elfman, whose big secret throughout the movie is that she's converting to Judaism. It's all low-stakes and perfectly pleasant, except for the theme song, “Something Worth Saving,” which plays so often it feels like the priest assigned it as penance after confession. Of course, there’s a lack of sexual tension, given the priest is celibate, but at least Norton gets to pop his directing cherry, a few years after doing an uncredited rewrite of "Frida."

Olivia Wilde won an Independent Spirit Award for "Booksmart," a coming-of-age buddy comedy about two bookworms who decide to cut loose for one night at the end of high school. Wilde previously wrote and directed a short film called "Free Hugs" in 2011, executive produced an Academy Award-nominated documentary about Ebola virus response teams called "Body Team 12," plus music videos for the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. Wilde developed the film with screenwriter Katie Silberman, revising a ten-year-old script, and it did so well that Wilde is now attached to direct three other future films, including an as-yet-undetermined superhero movie for Marvel. 

Barbra Streisand became the first woman to win a Golden Globe for Best Director with her first film, "Yentl," a project she spent nearly 15 years developing, eventually turning the original Isaac Bashevis Singer play into a musical. It's about a woman in Poland who disguises herself as a man in order to study the Talmud, falls in love with Mandy Patinkin, and causes his fiancee, Amy Irving, to fall in love with her disguised male self. It's like if Tootsie were a deeply religious Jew instead of an aspiring soap-opera actor. The score won on Oscar, Streisand won that Globe for directing, and Irving achieved the rare double of a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination and a Worst Supporting Actress Razzie nom.

Drew Barrymore had been producing her own films since 1999's "Never Been Kissed," but she finally got into the director's chair for the coming-of-rage roller derby story "Whip It." Ellen Page plays the lead role of a beauty queen-turned-derby girl, while Barrymore puts herself into the ensemble as Smashley Simpson. (Other memorable names include Rosa Sparks, Bloody Holly, and Eva Destruction.) Barrymore also called in some of her old co-stars like Jimmy Fallon and Andrew "Owen and Luke's Brother" Wilson. The movie's charming but didn't smash at the box office, though it had multiple laps of popularity on video and even inspired a real-life roller derby boom.

By the time he made "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolff," Mike Nichols was already an established theater director, having won Tony Awards for the first three plays he ever directed: "Barefoot In The Park," "Luv" and "The Odd Couple." But even before that, he had a career as a comedy duo with Elaine May, who put out three best-selling albums and won a Grammy in their incandescent three-year run. So it's not a surprise that "Wolff," the film version of the Edward Albee play, was also a huge success. It got Oscar nominations in every eligible category — every performer got an acting nomination — and Elizabeth Taylor and Sandy Dennis earned statues. A year later, Nichols won Best Director for "The Graduate," and he never stopped working in Hollywood and on Broadway until his death in 2014.

Contrary to how he's known in the United States, Takeshi Kitano started his career as part of one of Japan's most popular comedy duos, Two Beat. He also hosted a popular game show called "Takeshi's Castle," where players had to do intense physical challenges, later aired in America as "Most Extreme Elimination Challenge." His film persona was always deadpan and serious, and that's the case in his first directorial effort, "Violent Cop" (also known as "Warning: This Man is Wild"). As you might guess from the title, Kitano plays a "Dirty Harry"-type cop who breaks all the rules and whose default reaction to everything is, well, violence. It was originally a comedy, but perhaps trying to break away from his old persona, Kitano rewrote it as a police drama. Once he was an established director, his later movies contained a lot more offbeat humor — but they didn't lose the violence.

Buster Keaton started performing in vaudeville when he was three years old. The family act centered around a young Buster disobeying his father, who would then throw him around the stage to the delight/horror of the audience. Entertainment was weird a hundred years ago. Keaton eventually became Fatty Arbuckle's co-star and "gag man," designing comedy bits and slapstick stunts for his films. After a successful series of shorts, Keaton got to direct "Three Ages," his first feature-length film — though it was structured in three parts, so it could be cut into short films it the full-length version flopped. The three different time periods are the Stone Age, Roman times, and present-day 1923, featuring Keaton and Wallace Beery competing for the same actress' affections in each. The film has some moments — Keaton using sled dogs in a chariot race and escaping from jail in a phone booth — but Keaton would truly hit his stride the next year with "The Navigator," a huge box-office hit (it made almost $700,000 in 1924!) featuring amazing-at-the-time underwater sequences.

John Cassavetes already had his own acting studio in New York City when he started getting leads in feature films. He played a juvenile delinquent in "Crime In The Streets," he played the title role in TV's "Johnny Staccato" and starred opposite Sidney Poitier in "Edge of the City" in 1957. The film "Shadows" came out of an improvised scene in the acting studio and was originally filmed with all improvised scenes. Cassavetes later wrote a script and filmed new footage two years later, which is what people now know as one of the first independent films. The original was lost for years because Cassavetes left the only print on a subway car, and it was only rediscovered by a diligent film scholar nearly 50 years later. Cassavetes would go on to make such indie classics as "Faces," "Husbands," "A Woman Under the Influence" and "The Killing of a Chinese Bookie."

Jackie Chan had a varied early career, working as a child actor, a stuntman for Bruce Lee, and even an adult-film actor in the mid-'70s. But his turn in "Drunken Master" made him a huge star, with his mix of different martial arts styles and what was known as "comedic kung fu." "Fearless Hyena" stars Chan as a coffin salesman who becomes a martial arts teacher who has to avenge his grandfather's murder. As in most of Chan's films, the plot doesn't matter as much as the set pieces, which include a chopsticks duel that was recreated in "Kung Fu Panda." Chan also invents "emotional kung fu" for the film, which involves displaying extreme emotions while fighting, in hopes of finding an opponent's vulnerability — emotionally, that is.

"Antwone Fisher" is the story of Antwone Fisher, a Navy sailor with a traumatic past, written appropriately enough by, you guessed it, Antwone Fisher. Denzel Washington originally bought the script to guarantee himself a part – the Navy psychiatrist who gets Fisher to open up about his life – but Washington later decided to make it his directorial debut. Washington also consciously tried to give opportunities to a younger generation of black actors, casting then-unknowns Derek Luke and Joy Bryant, as well as his future co-stars Viola Davis and Chiwetel Ejiofor. He also hired community members to work on the production and repaired buildings they used as shooting locations. Luke ended up winning an Independent Spirit Award, and Antwone Fisher himself got a Writers Guild Award nomination.

One consequence of Ben Affleck's stellar debut, "Gone Baby Gone," is that he set the stage for his younger brother to surpass him as a serious actor. Casey won an Oscar for his performance in "Manchester By The Sea," and post-"Justice League" Ben seems content to fight crime in a leather costume. But he does shine on the other side of the camera, especially when capturing working-class Boston, which he did as the co-writer of "Good Will Hunting" and his directorial follow-up, "The Town." He also showed he can make a gripping drama, his surprise Best Picture winner "Argo." And, as seems to be the forte of many of these actor-directors, he gets great performances from his actors, particularly Oscar nominee Amy Ryan.

Kevin Costner was planning on making "Dances With Wolves" since the mid-'80s when he read it as a spec script and encouraged screenwriter Michael Blake to turn it into a novel. Costner bought the movie rights, and the unheralded movie became a monster hit at the box office and the Oscars, winning Best Picture and Best Director while earning over $400 million. Despite spawning a thousand hacky jokes about Native American names, the movie is a respectful portrayal of Native American culture. It ultimately inspired Costner to return to the Western genre with "Open Range" — and a long Western with "Wyatt Earp" — and to long movies with "The Postman."  Don't worry, marathon film fans — there's an extended cut of "Dances With Wolves" that runs 3 hours, 53 minutes long. Look, we aren't talking about actors who became editors here, just directors.

Clint Eastwood had just finished painting his wagon, and instead of doing another musical, he took the director’s chair for "Play Misty For Me." He said in his biography, "I stored away all the mistakes I made and saved up all the good things I learned, and now I know enough to control my own projects and get what I want out of actors." It starred Eastwood himself, along with Jessica Walter in her first starring role, and taught the world that The Man With No Name was also a jazz fan. Of course, he was — in jazz, it’s the notes you’re not playing, and with Eastwood's acting, it’s the dialogue he’s not saying. The movie's about a DJ (Eastwood, playing against type) who is stalked by an obsessive fan. The movie did well with critics and at the box office, and Eastwood kept directing steadily, but it wasn’t until "Unforgiven" in 1992 that Eastwood was really considered a prestige artist. Since then, "Unforgiven" and "Million Dollar Baby" both won Best Picture, and a list of Eastwood-directed Oscar-winning thespians includes Gene Hackman, Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Hillary Swank, and Morgan Freeman. It seems like the only person Clint Eastwood can’t get a Best Actor statue for is Clint Eastwood.

Charles Laughton had a wide-ranging career, playing roles from Captain Bligh in "Mutiny on the Bounty" to Inspector Javert in "Les Miserables" to Quasimodo in "The Hunchback of Notre Dame." But in 1955, he decided to direct his first film, an adaptation of the novel "The Night of the Hunter." It's a haunting, scary movie, thanks to Robert Mitchum's truly unsettling performance as the villain, but also due to Laughton's use of odd angles and bizarre, surrealistic sets. The movie wasn't a financial success, and Laughton never directed again, but Empire Magazine called it the No. 71 film of all time.

Bill Murray’s first and only effort behind the camera was "Quick Change," a movie that starts out as the story of a clever bank robbery and turns into a tale about the nightmare of trying to get anywhere in New York City on time. Murray plays the lead and co-directs, along with writer Howard Franklin. It's a remake of the French film "Hold-Up," which probably explains why Murray disguises himself as a clown for the robbery, though the French would have preferred a mime. It's a classically jaded performance from Murray, and some of the clearly improvised takes prove that even Bill Murray can’t completely contain Bill Murray. He never directed again, probably because it’s so much more relaxing to be on the other side of the lens.

Child actors end up behind the camera quite a bit, both because they’ve spent countless years effectively interning on movie sets and because you never know if what’s cute at age 10 is going to last. Such is the case with Ron Howard of "The Andy Griffith Show" and "Happy Days," who slid into the director’s chair just as his hair began sliding off his head. The plot of "Grand Theft Auto" is simple: Ron Howard wants to marry his rich girlfriend in Las Vegas, while her parents think he's only after her money. When they steal the family's Rolls-Royce and head to Vegas to get married, a massive car chase results, involving helicopters, real car thieves, and a demolition derby. The critical reception was bad, but the box office was great, which makes sense since it was a Roger Corman production. He’d go on to bigger and better things soon enough. "Night Shift," starring his pal Henry Winkler, was a hit in 1982, and then "Splash" was a blockbuster, but he'll always have a soft spot for "Grand Theft Auto" — but unfortunately no royalties from the video game.

Jodie Foster is another former child star who moved into directing, though she transitioned into adult stardom just fine. "Little Man Tate" feels autobiographical, since Foster was a child prodigy herself. It's the story of a child genius, his overwhelmed mother (played by Foster), and his attempted placement at a school for the gifted. There are interesting visual elements, but the most impressive feat is yielding a genuinely nuanced performance from screen newbie Harry Connick Jr. Foster also pulls this off in "Home For The Holidays," getting great performances out of Steve Guttenberg and a highly improvisational Robert Downey Jr. She also directed a career-salvaging performance from Mel Gibson in "The Beaver," a deeply strange movie about a man who communicates via a hand puppet.

To a generation of "All In the Family" watchers, Rob Reiner will always be Meathead. But to a slightly younger generation, he’s the bearded filmmaker who interviews Spinal Tap. "This Is Spinal Tap!" was written by Reiner along with band members Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer. This film essentially invented the mockumentary style that many others, especially Guest, would embrace for years. The best two-person scenes are between Reiner and Guest, from the explanation of the 0-11 amplifier, the quiet piano ballad “Lick My Love Pump” and Guest’s discussion of his dream of becoming a haberdasher. Reiner begins his career on an incredible hot streak, directing "The Sure Thing," "Stand By Me," "The Princess Bride" (in which his Spinal Tap cap is visible in Fred Savage’s bedroom), "When Harry Met Sally...," "Misery" and "A Few Good Men." And then he made "North." No one bats a thousand.

Gene Kelly was already a huge movie star and choreographer, but "On The Town," a musical about three sailors on 24-hour shore leave in NYC, was his first film as director, though he gave a co-directing credit to his longtime assistant choreographer, Stanley Donen. The film broke new ground for the Hollywood musical, both in how Kelly integrated ballet into the dance sequences and the use of real locations in New York City. The biggest problem was actually Frank Sinatra's rabid fans, which necessitated hiding the cameras in cars from time to time. "On The Town" also paved the way for Kelly to star in, direct, and choreograph perhaps his greatest musicals, "An American In Paris" and "Singin' In The Rain." Still, even though they shot in America's profanity capital, New York, censors found the line "New York, New York, it's a helluva town" far too raunchy, so they had to sing "It's a wonderful town" instead.

Ben Stiller had directed an episode of his eponymous show as well as a short called "The Hustler of Money" for "Saturday Night Live" before he took on "Reality Bites." The script stayed in development for years, particularly after "Singles" bombed, but when Winona Ryder decided she liked the script, the movie was a go. The movie is very much a time capsule of 1994 — Stiller's character works for fake MTV, Ethan Hawke's character is a slacker, there's a faux "Real World" show and a crucial plot point involves an HIV test. The movie was a mild success, enough so that Stiller got to make "The Cable Guy" a few years later with Jim Carrey, featuring a script by a totally unknown guy named Judd Apatow.

Mel Gibson's debut was "The Man Without a Face," the story of a reclusive painter, disfigured in a car accident, who starts tutoring a teenage boy. Some actor-directors might rely on their handsome faces as a boost — not so with Gibson in this one. Unlike the novel it's based on, Gibson's film tones down the sexuality between the said faceless man and the young boy. Gibson followed this up with "Braveheart," an Academy Award winner for Best Picture and Best Director, then "The Passion of the Christ" and then a lot of racist voicemail messages and exile, before bouncing back with "Hacksaw Ridge" in 2016.

Eddie Murphy could do anything he wanted by the late '90s. He could wear head-to-toe leather and play as many characters he wanted, regardless of their age or race. "Harlem Nights" was an Eddie Murphy heat check; a period crime drama written and directed by Eddie Murphy, starring Eddie Murphy and his brother Charlie Murphy. Eddie and Richard Pryor play nightclub owners, and the film also stars Redd Foxx — it's like a multigenerational reunion of black comedians. But the tone is very strange — it's a period piece, but everyone talks like Eddie Murphy; Eddie's the hero but he shoots multiple women and hits one with a trash can. It has a lot of action, but also a lot of scenes where people stand still for minutes at a time. The movie made money, but for whatever reason, that was it for Eddie's directing career. Maybe it was all too raw?

George Clooney took over as director on "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind," the story of game show host Chuck Barris and his ridiculous memoir about being a CIA assassin, after a revolving door of lead actors and directors had passed on Charlie Kaufman's script. At various points David Fincher, Bryan Singer, Brian De Palma, and Curtis Hanson were going to direct; and Johnny Depp, Ben Stiller, Sean Penn, Ed Norton, and Kevin Spacey had all been potential leads. But instead, it was Sam Rockwell starring, and Clooney directing as well as playing Barris' CIA contact. Clooney was an ideal choice, as his own father had been a game show host in the same era. He also got the studio to give him final cut and cast Rockwell, in exchange for doing a cameo in "Spy Kids 2." It's not clear that the movie holds together, and Clooney appears to be trying a variety of tricks and camera styles. The whole thing remains watchable and compelling, mostly due to Rockwell's off-kilter performance and dancing. Clooney followed this up with "Good Night and Good Luck," for which he got Oscar nominations for writing and directing. He did win an Oscar that year, but it was for his acting in "Syriana".

Sarah Polley was only 26 when she wrote and directed "Away From Her," a story about a woman with Alzheimer's who moves into an institution and slowly forgets her husband while bonding with another patient. It's a heartbreaking story that nonetheless remains uplifting, and Julie Christie's performance in the lead role got her an Oscar nomination. Polley also received an Oscar nomination for her screenplay. She followed up the film five years later with "Take This Waltz" and has since made "Stories We Tell," a documentary about Polley's own family secrets, and the miniseries "Alias Grace," based on the Margaret Atwood novel. So Canadian!

In 2008, Greta Gerwig co-directed "Nights and Weekends" with Joe Swanberg, who was also her co-writer and co-star. Her solo directorial debut came nine years later with "Lady Bird," a coming-of-age drama about a high school senior in Gerwig's hometown of Sacramento. Although not technically autobiographical, Gerwig prepared the cast by giving them yearbook pages, photos, and journals to study, and she banned smartphones on the set. The movie got five Oscar nominations (Gerwig was only the fifth female Best Director nominee in history), and Gerwig said she wants to make a whole quartet of "Sacramento films" after "Lady Bird." She followed this up with "Little Women," which got six Oscar nominations, including one for Best Picture and one for Gerwig for Best Adapted Screenplay – although not one for Gerwig's direction. Maybe she should have set the adaptation in Sacramento too?

An impressive debut from "Scrubs" star Zach Braff, "Garden State" introduced the world to The Shins, a band that will change your life, and also to manic pixie dream girls, like the helmet-wearing epileptic pathological liar played by Natalie Portman. A young man returns home for his mother's funeral, falls in love, and hangs out with grave-robbers at a quarry. Plus, Young Adult Sheldon wears a suit of armor. The movie was a huge hit, on a tiny $2.5 million budget, and even won a Grammy for its soundtrack. Braff followed it up with "Wish I Was Here," whose budget he raised on Kickstarter, inspiring a generation of artists to hit up their friends for money on the internet.

Though he wasn't officially credited, Kurt Russell was the real director of "Tombstone," after writer-director Kevin Jarre was fired a month into a badly delayed production. Russell stepped in and rewrote the script, provided replacement director George Cosmatos with shot lists, and spent so much time editing with Val Kilmer that Kilmer moved in with him temporarily . (Cosmatos also "ghost directed" "Cobra" for Sylvester Stallone.) The result was a cult favorite Western and one of the greatest performances of Kilmer's career. Russell never directed again, secretly or otherwise, but a few years later, he co-wrote "Escape From LA" with John Carpenter and Debra Hill.