All Of Hollywood's Favorite Actors Turned Directors

About a week ago, the trailer for Haley Kiyoko’s upcoming film and directorial debut, Girls Like Girls, dropped, and fans are ecstatic, to say the least. Based on Kiyoko’s 2023 book and 2015 song of the same name, Girls Like Girls is a coming-of-age story that follows Coley (Maya da Costa), a 17-year-old girl who moves to a small town after the death of her mother. While she tries to adjust, she begins to fall for popular girl Sonya, who seems to reciprocate despite having a boyfriend (Levon Hawke).

Having gotten her start as a Disney kid and having continued her career as a musician, Kiyoko is no stranger to leading her creative endeavours. While this is her feature directorial debut, she’s directed many of her own music videos. Not to mention, she’s one of many actors who’ve begun onscreen and then transitioned to the director’s chair, many of whom have garnered acclaim for doing so. For example, Bradley Cooper made his directorial debut with A Star Is Born, and John Krasinski has a whole franchise under his belt with A Quiet Place. Needless to say, for some actors, directing seems like the logical next step in a fruitful career in entertainment.

Below, see some of L’OFFICIEL’S favorite actors turned directors. 

Bradley Cooper

When it was announced that a fourth A Star Is Born would be released, starring Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga, fans were shocked, even moreso when it was revealed Cooper would be directing. He worked very closely with Lady Gaga throughout the film as well, as it was her film debut, and he oftentimes directed her still in character as Jackson Maine. While the prospect of directing was nerve-wracking, Cooper knew this re-telling would be his way to break through: „I realized I was a little obsessed with the storytelling, how you film it, how you tell a story, and that’s what always interests me,” he mentions to The Hollywood Reporter, „Clint Eastwood was going to do it. … We were going to do it together, but I thought I was too young and not right for the role. It kept haunting me, this broken love story. Shots kept coming into my head. And I would dream about it. I just realized I had to do it.“

John Krasinski

Known as the loveable Jim Halpert from The Office, John Krasinski garnered significant acclaim for his directing of A Quiet Place (2018). That being said, his journey as a director began long before that, while The Office was still airing. Before he even booked The Office, Krasinski had adapted a book by David Foster Wallace titled Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. As he describes in a piece for Empire, Krasinski was initially hesitant to take on the project. However, after encouragement from his colleagues, he realized that his unique connection to the material would make him the ideal director. Since then, it has been an uphill climb for Krasinski, the director, with the incredibly successful A Quiet Place franchise under his belt, which he wrote, directed, and starred in. 

Molly Gordon

Molly Gordon has been around film sets her entire life, with parents Bryan Gordon and Jessie Nelson being industry professionals, so it’s no surprise that being involved in filmmaking piqued her interest. She had already acted in Shiva, Baby! (2020) and The Bear (2023), when she made her directorial debut with Theater Camp (2023), in which she starred opposite Ben Platt. She will make her second foray into directing with Peaked, produced by A24. 

Jordan Peele

Jordan Peele began as a comedian, spending time in Amsterdam and Chicago doing stand-up. It was in Chicago where he met his future co-star Keegan-Michael Key. The two found great success with their sketch comedy series Key & Peele, which aired from 2012 to 2019. In 2017, Peele took critics by surprise with his first film, Get Out, a story about the horrors of living as a Black person in the United States. The Atlantic called the film „a subversive horror masterpiece,“ and it was one of the most profitable films of 2017. 

Jesse Eisenberg

In 2022, Jesse Eisenberg made his directorial debut with When You Finish The World, based on an audio drama of the same name created by Eisenberg in 2020. The film features Finn Wolfhard and Julianne Moore as a son and mother navigating their complicated relationship while attempting to connect with other people. The film premiered atthe  2022 Sundance Film Festival and was released in cinemas on Jan 20, 2023.