10 Actors Who Became Awesome Directors
2. John Cassavetes
Before becoming a director, John Cassavetes was best known for appearing in almost 30 TV shows and movies throughout the 1950s, most notably starring opposite Sidney Poitier in the 1957 drama Edge of the City.
The very next year, Cassavetes made his directorial debut with Shadows, which with its uncommonly low-key, subdued approach to character-driven drama is considered a pioneering work of American independent cinema.
Cassavetes' near-30-year directing career included other rapturously received dramas such as Faces, A Woman Under the Influence (scoring him a Best Director Oscar nod), The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, and Opening Night, many of them starring his wife Gena Rowlands.
Though the director's life and career were tragically cut short by alcoholism, he nevertheless graduated from talented actor to almost impossibly influential auteur with a virtually unprecedented seamlessness.
His films so thoroughly helped create the language for smaller scale dramatic fare that his DNA continues to live on in dozens of films released each and every year.