The recent release of the trailer for Woman of the Hour, Anna Kendrick’s directorial debut, raises the time-old question of whether actors can direct. Can one direct and star in a production? Do actors even have the correct skills? And why have more and more actors started directing too?

Woman of the Hour famously has a near-perfect Rotten Tomatoes score, and the trailer has been released to raving critical reception thus far. Kendrick is a key figure in my cinema upbringing, starring in some key films from my teenage years: Twilight, Into The Woods, The Last Five Years and the Pitch Perfect film series. It seems her directorial debut will be successful, and there is no reason for it not to be, considering her long and successful acting career.

“actors may or may not get involved in directing, and vice versa, for the sake of the film and the art”

Kendrick isn’t the only actor foraying into the production team. Clint Eastwood’s career began with his roles in Rawhide (1959-1965) and The Man With No Name Trilogy (1964-1966). More recently, Greta Gerwig began as an actor, and continues to make cameos in her films, including Lady Bird (2017) and Little Women (2019). The director cameo is a running tradition, and many are known to make cameos in their own movies. Kendrick will have seen this on the set of Pitch Perfect with Elizabeth Banks playing the comic side character Gail. Quentin Tarantino also tends to make a small cameo in his films. The actor-director tradition goes back even further, with Orson Welles appearing in Citizen Kane (1941) and even Charlie Chaplin acting and directing The Great Dictator (1940).

So why do actors so often dip in and out of directing? It is worth noting that actors can jump between jobs much more often, while directors remain significantly involved in post-production, after the actual shoot. Some argue this means actors have the capacity to earn much more over a period of time, especially if successful and in demand, although obviously for someone like Anna Kendrick the money probably isn’t a motivating factor. Rather, actors may or may not get involved in directing, and vice versa, for the sake of the film and the art. For example, Elizabeth Banks’ character in Pitch Perfect, while small, made a huge splash due to the subliminal feminist comedy evident in her lines, and her brilliant delivery of them. There is an argument that Banks was able to portray this character most effectively as she was carrying the feminist message of the duo, with subtle yet crucial reactions to the lines of her misogynistic comic partner.

“The fact that she sits in front of the camera rather than behind it shouldn’t detract from her creative vision and a capable and experienced production team will be able to effect that vision”

However, actor-directors still spark questions in my mind. Surely having a director in front of the camera, rather than behind it, risks changing the relationships on set, and surely it slows down the shoot? How is the director able to be happy with a cut if they are unable to see the shoot as it happens? I asked this question at a film festival question and answer session, and one of the actor-directors told me that she had a ‘fabulous DOP’ (director of photography). Is the directing on set thus taken out of the hands of the director and shared between the rest of the production team?

I think my answer lies in a better understanding of a director’s role. Kendrick, as star of her own movie, will still have been heavily involved in planning, scripting, editing and post-production processes. The fact that she sits in front of the camera rather than behind it shouldn’t detract from her creative vision and a capable and experienced production team will be able to effect that vision. The Woman of the Hour trailer is well put together, and unlike many trailers of late, it leaves much to the imagination, building suspense before the release of the film.