10 great debuts by actors turned directors

Adapt­ed from a Jean-Paul Sartre short sto­ry about a boy grow­ing up in the after­math of World War One, The Child­hood of a Leader marks the direc­to­r­i­al debut of actor Brady Cor­bet, best known for his roles in Melan­cho­lia, Simon Killer and Fun­ny Games. Cor­bet is the lat­est in a long line of Hol­ly­wood stars to turn their atten­tion to the oth­er side of the lens, show­ing a nat­ur­al film­mak­ing flair that saw him become the recip­i­ent of two awards at the 2015 Venice Film Fes­ti­val. Here are 10 more actors-turned-direc­tor who got it right first time of asking.

Already an estab­lished screen icon by the time he direct­ed his first fea­ture aged 32, Den­nis Hop­per achieved some­thing remark­able with Easy Rid­er: not only was it an enor­mous crit­i­cal and finan­cial suc­cess in 1969, it also helped push Amer­i­can cin­e­ma in a brave new direc­tion with its rev­o­lu­tion­ary style. What was so inno­v­a­tive about the film then seems unre­mark­able now – copi­ous loca­tion shoot­ing and use of nat­ur­al light­ing, French New Wave-inspired edit­ing, exist­ing pop and rock tracks com­pris­ing the sound­track – but even stripped of con­text Easy Rid­er still feels like a land­mark work. Both a great Amer­i­can trav­el­ogue and a snap­shot of the dying coun­ter­cul­ture movement.

Pol­ley had been act­ing for 20 years before she took up the direc­to­r­i­al reins on Away From Her, which she adapt­ed from Alice Munro’s short sto­ry about a retired mar­ried cou­ple com­ing to terms with Alzheimer’s. It’s very much a case of start­ing as you mean to con­tin­ue for Pol­ley as a film­mak­er, as she explores the strength of a mar­riage through infi­deli­ty and more of life’s unex­pect­ed hard­ships. Away From Her is a grown-up dra­ma with a bull­shit-free approach to fabled true love and grow­ing old, a film about how mem­o­ry can be both bless­ing and bur­den. And it’s all tack­led with sur­pris­ing matu­ri­ty by the then 26-year-old Polley.

Where so much of the Ben Affleck’s work as an actor in the decade post-Good Will Hunt­ing seemed unin­spired (Pearl Har­bor, Gigli, Dare­dev­il), his direc­to­r­i­al debut, Gone Baby Gone, was by con­trast mea­sured and smart. It’s an uncom­mon­ly emo­tion­al­ly com­plex mod­ern crime flick, full of moral­ly ambigu­ous char­ac­ters and com­plete with a haunt­ing down­er end­ing that most Hol­ly­wood movies wouldn’t dare touch. As a course cor­rec­tive and proof of his worth after years of sus­pect career choic­es, Affleck couldn’t have hoped for a bet­ter outcome.

Already a stage main­stay and an emerg­ing tal­ent on screens big and small when he direct­ed and starred in Hen­ry V, Ken­neth Branagh pro­pelled him­self to star­dom with his take on Shakespeare’s famous play. The Bard’s tale of an Eng­lish king invad­ing France almost on a whim is pre­dictably fine fod­der for Branagh’s cast of British stage stal­warts (includ­ing Judi Dench and Paul Scofield), but what’s sur­pris­ing is the RADA-trained actor’s han­dle on the mate­r­i­al as cin­e­ma. For a first film it’s remark­ably assured, and even bold with inven­tion, with Branagh hav­ing Derek Jacobi’s nar­ra­tor Cho­rus pre­sent­ing the action from a mod­ern per­spec­tive and exam­in­ing the after­math of the bloody bat­tle of Agin­court with a lengthy track­ing shot wor­thy of Welles.

It took cin­ema­go­ers and crit­ics years to realise the mis­take they’d made in ini­tial­ly giv­ing short shrift to Charles Laughton’s clas­sic 1955 thriller. The orig­i­nal ver­dict on the film was so sub­dued, in fact, that Laughton was dis­cour­aged from ever direct­ing again, and only after his death did his exploits behind the cam­era get the recog­ni­tion they deserved. Today, The Night of the Hunter is wide­ly regard­ed as a superla­tive exam­ple of South­ern Goth­ic. Cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Stan­ley Cortez once said that Laughton was the only film­mak­er oth­er than Orson Welles who tru­ly under­stood light.

Like Charles Laughton, Tony award-win­ning actress Bar­bara Loden made just one under-appre­ci­at­ed film in her life­time, only for it to be embraced as a clas­sic fol­low­ing her untime­ly death. Wan­da, the first fea­ture writ­ten, direct­ed by and star­ring the same woman, finds Loden’s impas­sive title char­ac­ter drift­ing from grey Penn­syl­va­nia min­ing towns to cheapo high­way motels to grim red­neck bars, always at the mer­cy of cal­lous men, hav­ing resigned her­self to the idea that it’s all she’ll ever deserve. An uncom­pro­mis­ing­ly inde­pen­dent film in the John Cas­savetes mould (it was shot by a four-per­son crew with most­ly non-pro­fes­sion­al actors), Wan­da will leave you lament­ing a great tal­ent lost.

A reg­u­lar That Guy actor pri­or to park­ing him­self in the director’s chair in 2003, Tom McCarthy has estab­lished him­self to be one of con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­can cinema’s pre­mier human­ists. He went big and weighty in 2015 with Spot­light, but McCarthy’s small-scale debut could hard­ly be more dif­fer­ent, the rare kind of quirky indie dra­ma where such a label isn’t a pejo­ra­tive. McCarthy’s film about a young man inher­it­ing a dis­used train sta­tion in a qui­et New Jer­sey town is quaint and eccen­tri­cal­ly-humoured, but joy­ful­ly so. The Sta­tion Agent is also notable for star­ring Peter Din­klage in a break­out lead role he’s yet to top.

While not exact­ly a rein­ven­tion of the tor­tured artist bio, Ed Har­ris’ Pol­lock still ris­es above the crowd through an under­stand­ing of its sub­ject, which the direc­tor spent more than a decade inter­nal­is­ing. Where all too many Oscar-bait­ing biopics are slav­ish retellings of a life, Pol­lock is first and fore­most an unflinch­ing char­ac­ter study, prob­ing the bipo­lar nature of Jack­son Pol­lock and mak­ing his art an almost inci­den­tal fea­ture of a tur­bu­lent life. Har­ris shoots in a clean, no-non­sense style, but his great­est gift as a direc­tor is his abil­i­ty to recog­nise his full capa­bil­i­ties as an actor, guid­ing him­self to a painful­ly sen­si­tive career-best per­for­mance in the title role.

No mat­ter what genre he finds him­self in, Tom­my Lee Jones always has the air of the cow­boy about him. The terse Tex­an is inescapably a man of the west­ern, so it stands to rea­son that Jones’ first two as direc­tor have been oaters. The first, The Three Buri­als of Melquiades Estra­da, sees Jones bring his trade­mark grav­i­tas to the tale of an hon­ourable man (played by Jones him­self) on a pil­grim­age to simul­ta­ne­ous­ly bury his friend and pun­ish the man’s mur­der­er in the mod­ern West. The result is akin to Cor­mac McCarthy being put through Quentin Tarantino’s nar­ra­tive scrambler.

Before his direc­to­r­i­al debut, Rob Rein­er was best known for play­ing Michael ​“Meat­head” Stivic in the CBS sit­com All in the Fam­i­ly. With This Is Spinal Tap, though, Rein­er imme­di­ate­ly start­ed on a fast-track to becom­ing one of the ​’80s fore­most film­mak­ers, his first fea­ture kick­ing off one of the hottest hot streaks of the decade. A mock­u­men­tary about a hard-work­ing hair met­al band with delu­sions of grandeur, it’s one of the most quotable – and best – come­dies ever made. Just check out the film’s IMDb page, where the star rat­ing goes up to 11.