10 Iconic Directors Who Lived Their Movies Whilst Making Them

3. John Ford (Made Great Westerns By More Or Less Living In The Old West)

John Ford - considered by many critics the quintessential American director, if not the greatest - was, in every sense of the word, a tough bastard. Hardly an insensitive man, he nonetheless cultivated an image as a "tough, two-fisted, hard-drinking Irish sonofabitch", a man who brazenly insulted actors straight to their faces and would throw anyone who used foul language off his set. Little wonder he ended up the premiere director of the Western, that most mythic and masculine American genre. John Ford loved shooting in Monument Valley - it became the location for nine of his films, including Stagecoach and The Searchers. Ford went so far as to make his cast and crew virtually live in Monument Valley, spending their nights in tents and eating from a chuck wagon. (The great cowboy actor John Wayne apparently hated staying "out on the range".) "I wouldn't make a Western on the backlot," Ford said; "I think you can say that the real star of my Westerns has always been the land."