Better stick to the day job

Tom Fordy ranks terrible movies directed by great actors, from Ryan Gosling’s Lost River’ to Nicolas Cage’s Sonny’

- 

It’s something that numerous actors throughout cinema history have been powerless to resist: the desire to step onto the other side of the camera and direct. Studios are often quick to indulge a money-making star, while stars are just as quick to indulge themselves.

Of course, there are many actor-to-director success stories – from Clint Eastwood to Jordan Peele to Greta Gerwig – but there’s also a cynicism around actors who turn to directing, particularly when a film has that all-too-familiar air of a selfflattering vanity project.

And not all talented actors – even the greats – have been able to find that same creative spark behind the camera. Others, meanwhile, have proved very capable directors but have still churned out the odd stinker.

Here are 15 terrible movies directed by great actors.

Lost River (2014), directed by Ryan Gosling

The usually beloved Ryan Gosling took a critical drubbing for writing, directing, and producing this nonsensical fantasy noir. It stars Christina Hendricks as a hard-up mother who works at a burlesque club which stages acts of gruesome violence. Gosling mimics the worst pretentious impulses of his Drive and Only God For ves director Nicolas Winding Refn, while borrowing liberally from the likes of David Lynch and David Cronenberg. The film isn’t quite as bad as peeling your own face off – as Hendricks’s character does in the film – but Gosling’s directorial debut (and still his only directing credit) is pompous, derivative mush.

Harlem Nights (1989), directed by Eddie Murphy