Just in case you haven’t noticed, its award season again- Red Carpets, Gold Statues and lots of speeches. SAG, Directors Guild, Golden Globes, People’s Choice and of course the Academy Awards on March 7th. As it has been said, “just to be nominated is an honor” – yes, to be singled out among so many is certainly an accomplishment, but there is no denying the specialness of an actual “win”.
Quite a few of the winners are actors that wear multiple hats. They are often nominated for directing, acting, and/or writing in the same year. Impressive.
If everyone has at least one good book in them (The rule: “write what you know”. “Write about what is real for you”, etc), then to paraphrase, every good actor has at least one great directing job in them. Quite a few of them have won Academy Awards for their efforts. These actor/directors don’t always put together a movie about what they themselves have experienced, but they do direct films with subjects that you can tell they are passionate about:
*Warren Beatty* Beatty was nominated for 4 academy awards, best Director/Picture/Actor/Screenplay for “Reds” 1981 – a film about John Reed who went to Russia in 1917 to report about the revolution. At one time, many thought Communism to be the utopia of the people and Beatty was able to bring a lot of that era to life. He won for Best Director.
*Robert Redford * “Ordinary People”, 1980, Best Director for this dysfunctional family drama. (Also gave us a good movie called, “Quiz Show” 1994 – I’m dating myself, but I remember that scandal from the early days of television)
*Kevin Costner* Early in his career, Costner was cast as the dead friend in “The Big Chill”. I’m sure realizing there was no where to go but up, he gave us “Dances with Wolves” 1990, Best Director, Best Picture.
*Clint Eastwood* Much more than just a squint eyed cowboy with no name and a cigarillo, he has won critical acclaim for tons of films and was nominated several times, same film, for Best Actor/Director/Picture. Eastwood won Academy Awards for “Unforgiven” 1992 and ”Million Dollar Baby” 2004. (“Mystic River”, 2003 did not win, but it is still brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.)
*Ron Howard* And, of course, can’t forget “Opie” (Andy Griffith Show) /” Richie Cunningham” (Happy Days). He won Best Director in 2001 for “Beautiful Mind”. He was nominated again, Director/Picture for “Frost/Nixon”. (I thought another of his movies, “Apollo 13” was awesome. I remembered how the space flight ended, but I was still totally wrapped up in the drama of it all.)
There are probably other terrific movies directed by actors, but these are just some of my Academy Award winning favorites.
*BTW: Good Luck to Lee Daniels who just received a Best Director Academy Award nomination for “Precious” – which was also nominated for Best Picture. Excellent
