Home Featured Content

10 Great Movies Made By Actor-Writer-Directors

Being a good director is one thing. The ability to function as writer, director and actor all on the same film is about being on another level entirely. Not many attempt it: directors sometimes write and writers sometimes direct, but most filmmakers decline to step in front of the camera as well as call the shots behind it. And, those that do aren't always particularly successful.

1) Citizen Kane (Orson Welles)

Recommended Videos

citizen_kane

There are numerous great films that Orson Welles made as actor-writer-director. There’s 1947’s delirious film noir The Lady from Shanghai; the sweaty, seedy thriller Touch of Evil; the peerless black comedy The Trial; the groundbreaking, mind-bending “documentary” F for Fake; and any of the three unconventional Shakespeare films he created.

But how could any but Citizen Kane be listed as Welles’ greatest achievement, especially when the film has been so influential on so many other great filmmakers since? Today, and likely for as long as we remember him, Kane remains Welles’ defining movie as both actor and filmmaker. It’s a masterpiece, perhaps the greatest movie of all time – and just one man played a huge part in making it that way.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10