Prominent Actresses Making Their Directorial Debuts Behind the Camera

Despite the persistent gender imbalance in who gets to direct movies, an increasing number of prominent actresses are directing feature films that are released in theaters. These women with clout in front of the camera are expanding their talents behind the camera as directors. Halle Berry, Robin Wright, and Taraji P. Henson are just some of the notable actresses who are making their feature-film directorial debuts with movies expected in cinemas in 2021 or 2022. While many established actresses have become directors, they’ve usually been directing short films, music videos, or TV projects.

It’s too early to know if this surge in well-known actresses making their feature-film directorial debuts will continue or if it will fluctuate. That’s because actresses who have become directors of theatrically released movies usually haven’t been getting the same opportunities to direct as many films as their male counterparts. For example, compare the filmographies of Clint Eastwood, George Clooney, and Ben Affleck to the filmographies of Barbra Streisand, Jodie Foster, and Angelina Jolie. All are Oscar winners, but the men have directed many more movies than the women have.

Other famous actresses who have directed theatrically released feature films to widespread critical acclaim include Greta Gerwig, Regina King, Olivia Wilde, and Emerald Fennell. Elizabeth Banks and the late Penny Marshall have been among the rare actresses-turned-directors who have directed movies for major movie studios. Most actresses-turned-directors helm independent films.

What motivates an accomplished actress to become a movie director? “Over the years … You’re biting your tongue on set, thinking, ‘God, I really could really direct that scene better,” Wright commented during a Cinema Café Q&A during the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. Wright stars in and made her feature-film directorial debut in the drama Land (about a depressed widow who isolates herself in a remote mountain cabin in Wyoming), which had its world premiere at Sundance. Focus Features released Land in theaters on February 12 and on video-on-demand on March 5.

Before helming her first feature-length movie, Wright directed several episodes of the Netflix drama House of Cards, while she co-starred on the show. She also directed the 2017 short film The Dark of Night. In addition, Wright is a director of Together Now, an anthology feature film from an all-female team of directors that includes Catherine Hardwicke, Kátia Lund, Lucía Puenzo, Patricia Riggen, Malgorzata Szumowska, Maria Sole Tognazzi, and Leena Yadav. The release date for Together Now is to be announced.

Netflix is distributing the feature-film directorial debuts of Rebecca Hall (Passing), Berry (Bruised), and America Ferrera (I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter). The movies’ release dates in cinemas and on Netflix are to be announced. Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga star in the drama Passing as two African American women in 1920s New York City who’ve chosen different paths because of their light skin color: One woman lives as a Black person, while the other woman lives as a white person.

Berry has the starring role in the drama Bruised, as a disgraced mixed-martial-arts fighter trying to make a comeback. And in the drama I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter (which is based on Erika L. Sánchez’s 2017 novel), Ferrera helms a story about a Mexican American clan coping with a sudden death in the family. Ferrera’s previous directing experience includes helming some episodes of NBC’s comedy series Superstore and Netflix’s dramedy series Gentefied.

Meanwhile, Henson (who previously directed an episode of Fox’s Empire) makes her feature-film directorial debut with the comedy/drama Two-Faced, for the production company Bron Studios. Henson also produces and stars in Two-Faced (whose release date and distributor are to be determined), as a mother of a teenage girl named Joy, who discloses the racist past of Joy’s high school principal. Meagan Good and Tamara Bass are co-stars, co-directors, and two of the producers of If Not Now, When?, a friendship drama (written by Bass) that Vertical Entertainment released in select theaters and video-on-demand on January 8.

For British actress Hall, directing Passinghad a lot of personal meaning to her, since her family has a multiracial background of white and African American people. Passing is based on Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel of the same name, and Hall says it took her about “13 or 14 years” to get the confidence to direct this story. In addition to directing Passing, Hall wrote the screenplay and is one of the film’s producers. She is not an actor in the movie.

During a live online Sundance Film Festival Q&A that was held after the film’s virtual world premiere, Hall explained why she chose Passing has her first feature film to write and direct: “Someone happened to hand [the Passing book] to me at a very precise moment in my life, when I was asking more questions, thinking more deeply about some of the unresolved, mysterious aspects of my mother’s family’s history. My mother is from Detroit, Michigan, and her father was almost certainly African American/white-passing. And his parents, I’ve now realized after doing some Internet searching, could have been white-passing also. At the time, there wasn’t really a language for that in my family.”

Hall added, “When I read this book, it gave me some historical context for the choices my grandfather made and possibly those before him. I had a very strong response to the women in it, for a lot of reasons. I found it an extraordinary piece of literature. And primarily because of that, I felt it would make an extraordinary movie. I had a strong sense of how I wanted it to be made. I certainly didn’t have the confidence, when I was 25, to do it. But I did write a screenplay then.”

Getting financing for these projects is often the biggest hurdle. And Hall says that she refused to compromise on her vision to make the film in black and white. “A lot of people said to me, ‘If you make the film in color, we’ll give you the money,’” Hall commented during Sundance’s Cinema Café Q&A. “And I said, ‘No. I’m going to be stubborn. It [filming Passing in black and white] is absolutely imperative to the movie. It makes sense ... That made [getting financing for the movie] very hard honestly, for a very, very long time … I got lucky. The stubbornness paid off in the end.”

Wright says that although she also experienced rejection in getting her feature directorial debut made, she had a different experience for the financing of Land, which she says took about three years. “It was never the intention for me to be in the movie,” Wright revealed during the Land post-premiere Q&A at Sundance. “We just were in a time crunch with getting financed. We only had a window of time where we could shoot the movie. And to do that, we needed an actress who was ready and available .... And the producers said, ‘Why don’t you just act in it?’ I was like, ‘Yep, I’m going to be there anyway. OK.’”

As for the transition from being an actress to becoming a filmmaker, Wright commented at Sundance’s Cinema Café Q&A that rejection comes with the territory: “I guess it’s no different than being an actor. You just get turned down for years and years … You get used to it.”

However, Wright stated at the Land premiere what appeals to her the most about being a director: “In a nutshell: I love the collaboration with all of the departments, because everyone is an architect of this building. We’re all in it together … As an actor, while it’s incredible, it’s more of a soloist act. You’re with yourself, you’re doing your homework. With [directing] … It’s the whole team.”