Best Films Directed by Actors — ‘The Night of the Hunter’ Still Reigns

I recently stumbled on a list. Back in 2009, Film Comment polled a group of esteemed critics, including J. Hoberman, Kent Jones, Dave Kehr, Amy Taubin, Jonathan Rosenbaum and David Thompson, on the best films directed by actors

There was one condition: the actor had to have directed fewer than five films. That rule removes the obvious heavyweights like Welles, Eastwood, Allen, Cassavettes, and Redford, and it turns the list into a celebration of one-offs, curiosities and actors who tried directing once or twice before going back to their intended craft.

Here's the Film Comment Top 20:

1. The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton)

2. Wanda (Barbara Loden)

3. The Lost One (Peter Lorre)

4. One-Eyed Jacks (Marlon Brando)

5. Bulworth (Warren Beatty)

6. Reds (Warren Beatty)

7. Nil by Mouth (Gary Oldman)

8. The World's Greatest Sinner (Timothy Carey)

9. The Apostle (Robert Duvall)

10. Drive, He Said (Jack Nicholson)

11. The Hired Hand (Peter Fonda)

12. Buffalo '66 (Vincent Gallo)

13. Good Night, and Good Luck. (George Clooney)

14. The Two Jakes (Jack Nicholson)

15. Faithless (Liv Ullmann)

16. The Spook Who Sat by the Door (Ivan Dixon)

17. Last Night (Don McKellar)

18. Devils on the Doorstep (Jiang Wen)

19. Little Murders (Alan Arkin)

20. The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (Tommy Lee Jones)

There are quite a few omissions, which I'll get to. Still, despite not having seen Carey’s, Dixon's and Jiang's films, I generally agree with most of these picks. That said, a tad few exceptions, I was never a fan of Beatty’s “Reds.” Nicholson's “The Two Jakes” being there is wild. Am I supposed to rewatch that one now?

The most legendary of them all is Charles Laughton's "The Night of the Hunter." The film was a critical and commercial bomb on release, so much so that Laughton never directed again. Ironically, it has since become one of the most influential American films ever made. Laughton's mix of suspense, horror and surrealist imagery was ahead of its time and too unusual for audiences of the 1950s. Today, it's rightly hailed as a masterpiece.

Just imagine what could have been. Had audiences embraced the film, Laughton might have gone on to build a body of work. He was already developing an adaptation of Norman Mailer's "The Naked and the Dead" when the film's failure ended his directing career, and he died just seven years later.

What I love most about this list, though, is seeing "Bulworth" in the top five, ahead of "Reds." Warren Beatty's 1998 satire, about a burned-out California politician who has a breakdown and starts telling voters the truth (often in rap), has aged almost like a prophecy. Its anger at donor-class politics, and corrupt media feels more relevant now than it did then! If you still haven't seen it, you're in for a treat.

Now, what's missing? This list came out 17 years ago, yet some films that were eligible in 2009 were simply passed over. Kevin Costner’s "Dances with Wolves,” Mel Gibson’s “Apocalypto” and "Braveheart,” Robert De Niro’s "A Bronx Tale" and Sean Penn’s "The Pledge” come to mind.

Then there's everything made since 2009, which would shake up any updated version of this poll:

• Upstream Color (Shane Carruth)

• TAR (Todd Field)

• Get Out (Jordan Peele)

• Lady Bird (Greta Gerwig)

• A Quiet Place (John Krasinski)

• The Brutalist (Brady Corbet)

• Eighth Grade (Bo Burnham)

• The Lost Daughter (Maggie Gyllenhaal)

• Mid90s (Jonah Hill)

What stands out when reading the Film Comment list in 2026 is how much rarer actor-directors were when it was published. Back then, an actor stepping behind the camera was usually a one-off, a passion project. This decade, it's become common. Since then, we've had Regina King, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Rebecca Hall, Bradley Cooper, Ben Affleck, Dev Patel, Zoë Kravitz, Anna Kendrick, Jesse Eisenberg, Brady Corbet, Kristen Stewart, Emerald Fennell, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Scarlett Johansson, Paul Dano, Olivia Wilde, Viggo Mortensen, Halle Berry, Ethan Hawke, Michael Keaton, Chris Pine, Angelina Joliet, Courtney Cox, Eva Longoria, Daniel Kaluuya, Angelina Jolie, Clea DuVall, Fran Kranz, Halina Reijn, Eva Victor and Harris Dickinson. That's a deep bench, and it barely scratches the surface.

Part of this is economics, and part of it is simply that the stigma is gone. Nobody treats an actor's directorial debut as a joke anymore— unless your name is Chris Pine. If Film Comment re-ran this poll today, the hardest part wouldn't be finding worthy contenders. It would be keeping the list to just 20.