A-List: Actors Turned Directors
By Josh Spiegel
October 1, 2009
BoxOfficeProphets.com
There are certainly some actors whose turns behind the camera haven't gone so well (all the studio interference aside, a recent example is Billy Bob Thornton, with All The Pretty Horses), but those who have succeeded have been working for many years, and some have received a few golden trophies for their work. That said, there's always a bit of skepticism when actors get behind the camera. Take the two upcoming films, for instance. Though Gervais's directing talents aren't really in question (he co-wrote and co-directed every episode of "The Office" and "Extras"), Barrymore doesn't have any major credits to her name. Moreover, her acting career isn't so much stagnant as unimpressive (the exception being her role in HBO's "Grey Gardens"). It'll be interesting to see how well-received the two films are.
The directors on this list may not be the best actors (one of them has only a few major film credits to his name as an actor, and is well-known more for his various television shows), but they have had long, successful, and mostly solid careers in the director's chair. Some of them have been doing this for decades; granted, I'm not sure that any of these people have a truly definable style that stands out from other directors' work, but there's no question that these directors get the job done, almost to the point of being journeymen helmers.
Ron Howard
He's been Opie, Richie Cunningham, and the narrator on the greatest TV comedy ever made, "Arrested Development." Of course, he's also an Academy Award-winning director, for his work on 2001's A Beautiful Mind, and has made two wildly popular cinematic adaptations of the nutty life of symbologist Robert Langdon, The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons. Even before the past decade, Ron Howard had been turning in solid to great work with movies such as Apollo 13, Parenthood, and Backdraft for years. Howard has mostly shunned his roots in TV, with the exception of his work on "Arrested Development", which he executive-produced; and a guest spot on "The Simpsons". Why blame him? With a career of over 25 years in the director's chair, Howard is now considered a consistent director, able to make popular entertainment or awards bait, like last year's Frost/Nixon.
Now, one could argue (in this case, one is me) that some of his most recent directing work is uninspired, to say the least (if you saw all of The Da Vinci Code without falling asleep, you are far better than me). Though Frost/Nixon was a good movie, it's not really a film that many people will remember years from now. Also, many people consider A Beautiful Mind to be a great film (I'm not one of them), but the year before, Howard helmed the misguided adaptation of Dr. Seuss's How the Grinch Stole Christmas, starring a made-up Jim Carrey. Still, with entertaining films such as Ransom and Apollo 13, it's hard to discount the fact that Howard is a confident, consistent, and crowd-pleasing director.
Clint Eastwood
There had been persistent rumors that Clint Eastwood's most recent film as director, Gran Torino, will be his last. I am sincerely glad it's not true (he's directing this winter's Invictus, starring Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela), not only because Eastwood has been behind such classics as Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby, but because Gran Torino is easily one of the worst films I've seen in the last few years. Moreover, the film he directed before that, last fall's Changeling, was a well-meaning but uninspired and sometimes laughable period drama. I don't mean to choose Eastwood here to make fun of him; far more of his work is worth celebration, from a movie as recent as Letters from Iwo Jima. Still, it should come as no surprise that Eastwood is a director of some quirk, even if it doesn't come across on screen.
Eastwood is well-known for being the kind of director to work very quickly on his sets; that's why he's able to have two films ready for release within two months (as he did with Changeling & Gran Torino and Letters from Iwo Jima & Flags of our Fathers). Of course, it's rare to find directors who can work so quickly with actors as varied as Sean Penn, Angelina Jolie, John Malkovich, and Kevin Costner. Still, this quality, along with the style of his films (no frills, no flashy camerawork, and the like), makes Eastwood an outstanding director, one who is confident in his abilities and the films he makes...even if it might help for him to do one or two more takes on the set or with the script.
George Clooney
From a director whose films are quirk-free to a director who embraces quirkiness we go. Clooney, still one of the most popular people in the world, has only made a few films, but when one of them gets nominated for a Best Picture (in a year when it should have taken the prize, despite being a small-ish film), it's worth sitting up and taking notice. Sure, Clooney has only directed three films (and we can probably just ignore Leatherheads, which certainly wasn't a bad film, but...well, I feel like I was one of only about 100 people who actually sat through it and still didn't get my money's worth), but the promise of his first two makes another film directed by this suave lothario something worth hoping for.
His debut, 2002's Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, was an adaptation of the autobiography of sleazeball game-show host Chuck Barris, who claimed to have worked with the federal government in the 1970s, with his cover being the star of The Gong Show. True or not, Clooney's film is slickly entertaining, funny, and features a brilliant lead performance from Sam Rockwell (who has still not broken out as a star; why hasn't his luck changed?). The film co-starred Julia Roberts, Drew Barrymore, and even features a young Michael Cera, pre-"Arrested Development". His follow-up, Good Night, and Good Luck. told the story of Edward Murrow and his fight on CBS against Joe McCarthy and the Red Scare. Clooney shows up as Murrow's producer, but it's David Strathairn as the newsman who steals the show. Clooney's work has become less intrusive, but impressive, nonetheless.
Orson Welles
It's kind of hard to argue with this choice, as his debut film is considered to be the best film of all time (or one of the best) by almost everyone who's ever watched a movie. 1941's Citizen Kane is not only a great debut film, but it's a great film, one that chose to experiment with the way the camera moves in and around a scene and its characters. The film is a veiled biography of famed newspaperman William Randolph Hearst, with Welles as the title character, Charles Foster Kane. Though the film ends with his death, the rest of the story chronicles Kane's life, from childhood to death, and everything in between. Some people may watch the film nowadays and wonder what all the fuss was about, but it's hard not to be blown away by the craftsmanship at work here, especially by Welles' cinematographer, Gregg Toland.
Welles wouldn't ever hit the exact same high with any of his other films, though his immediate follow-up, The Magnificent Ambersons, is not only a great movie, but one of the earliest and most prominent examples of why studio interference is never a good thing. Also, his 1958 south-of-the-border noir, Touch of Evil, is well-respected and weirdly offbeat enough to be remembered over 50 years later, despite Charlton Heston being the star with an unfortunate Spanish accent. Still, Welles would find his future films constantly tampered with, even as he continued to work with stranger and stranger ideas. Though his other films are not as frequently name-dropped as Citizen Kane, Orson Welles was a visionary director and actor.
Jon Favreau
Only in this column, I suppose, would this kind of odd sacrilege, where Orson Welles and Jon Favreau are mentioned in the same sentence, occur. It's just a tad askew, I suppose, that, when it comes to commercial success, the latter man has had his fair share, whereas Welles struggled to get any commercial acclaim in his waning years. Of course, when some of your movies feature Will Ferrell as an elf and Robert Downey, Jr. as a superhuman, rich lush, you just might find yourself as one of the hottest directors on the planet. Before Jon Favreau was thought of as a big-budget director, he was making small films behind and in front of the camera, with one of his best friends, a little-known, chatty, tall, and thin actor named Vince Vaughn.
Since the time of Swingers and the underrated Made, Favreau has made major strides as a director, despite being about as wildly stylish as Ron Howard. Then again, why did Iron Man need to have anything flashy when Downey, Jr. and Jeff Bridges play nemeses? Favreau is hard at work on the highly anticipated sequel to Iron Man, which should be as successful as the first film, even if it ends up falling in the same trap as pretty much every other sequel ever made. However, I doubt Favreau's directing career is going to find any major road blocks in the near future. Moreover, his acting career is gaining more steam; next week, he co-stars in Couples Retreat, a film he co-wrote with another of the film's stars, Vaughn. Sure, it looks a bit....silly, but the writers of Swingers and Made can't go wrong, right?