10 Promising & Big-Name Directors Who Turned To The Small Screen

He was an actor in From Here To Eternity. He directed Gregory Peck to acclaim in MacArthur, the famous general. He thrilled audiences with The Taking of Pelham 123, making an unlikely action star out of wisecracking hero Walter Mathauu. He won four Emmys over his storied career.

And he directed Jaws: The Revenge.

Yes, the man behind the film guaranteed to appear on every "worst of all time" list was once a force to be reckoned with, both on TV and in cinema. Apart from the classic Pelham, he helmed the anthology horror Nightmares and the Burt Reynolds vehicle White Lightning.

But Sargent, perhaps hedging his bets, always kept a toe in the TV door. One of his biggest successes came from 1978's The Night That Panicked America, a retelling of the Orson Welles War of the Worlds radio broadcast.

It was fortunate for Sargent, too, as he never recovered after Jaws. He became something of a master of TV movies, including The Karen Carpenter Story, The Long Island Incident and Something The Lord Made.

Sargent died of heart disease in 2014, but his legacy sets a precedent for young filmmakers: always have a fallback, even in the industry.