18 Times An Actor Wanted To Tell A Story So Much, They Just Decided To Write And Star In It

”I wrote [a role]. and then I bloody well played it.”

A lot of actors are super talanted, and when they decide to write their own movie or TV show, they rightly think "you know who would be good for this role? Me!"

Fox

So, here are 18 actors that wrote their own roles, and nailed them, obviously!

1. Matt Damon and Ben Affleck – Good Will Hunting

Miramax

Even though they'd had minor forrays into acting, neither had gotten the opportunity to show what they could do, and this was part of the reasoning for writing what turned out to be their big break, Good Will Hunting. 

Speaking about the intention behind writing the movie, Ben said this: "The whole thing of Good Will Hunting was really just to make – at the time – a video cassette that was like an acting reel. Like, we can’t get the job to show that we can do interesting stuff, so the whole thing was to have a reel and show casting directors, and so we’ll write these parts for ourselves."

The two had to keep things as cheap as possible, hence the movie mainly being "talking in rooms." It clearly paid off big time, as their "acting reel" ended up winning an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay alongside Robin Williams' award for Best Supporting Actor. 

Here they are in Good Will Hunting:

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2. Gene Wilder – Young Frankenstien

20th Century Fox

Considered one of the greatest comedies of all time, Gene Wilder is more commonly known for his starring role in Young Frankenstein. It was actually Gene – not director Mel Brooks – who had the idea for the movie. Gene thought of the movie in 1972 and wrote down four pages of a screenplay. Eventually, Mel Brooks would get involved, with his experience helped bring Gene's character to life. 

Funny enough, those four pages of the screenplay that Gene wrote down actually made it into the final edit! The movie is now a frequent part of "best comedy movies of all time" lists, and evidently, there was no one better to portray the brainchild of Gene than Gene himself!

Here a scene from early on in the movie:

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3. Sylvester Stalone – Rocky

United Artists

The way that Rocky got made is a remarkable story. Sylvester was broke, living in California, trying and failing to find work. Then, one night, he went to see Muhammad Ali fight Chuck Wepner and the idea for Rocky just came to him. 

Within three days he had his script finished (only about a third of it would be used in the final film), and he showed it to the producers at a casting call that he didn't get the part for. The producers offered him $360,000 for the script on the condition that someone other than Sylvester would play Rocky because they wanted a Hollywood name. But he knew that if the film was a success, he would never forgive himself for not being the star. 

So, Sylvester held out, insisting that he'd only let them make the film if he could play Rocky, and they eventually relented, giving him a $1m budget to make and star in the film. Rocky went on to be nominated for nine Academy Awards (winning three), and become one of the most profitable film franchises of all time! 

Here's one of the most iconic scenes:

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4. Donald Glover – Atlanta

FX

When Donald Glover decided to leave Community after season five, it was to focus on more personal projects including the writing and producing of Atlanta, which he also starred in. 

There was a variety of motivations for creating the show, Donald said that "what was important to me was that this show was personal and that this show had a specific take." Describing the series, Donald said: "The show is about being Black and it's hard to write that down."

Atlanta ran for four seasons and won a host of awards including a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series for Glover himself. 

Here's the opening scene of season one:

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5. Bill Hader – Barry

HBO

Bill's motivation for writing Barry was definitely more about the narrative than his starring role. In fact, he finds it difficult to write for himself, saying. "I'm not that great at writing big characters for myself and I tend to get excited about the other characters."

His passion for the show and disregard for his own characters means that he's actually forgotten to write Barry into an episode – he then received a note from HBO saying he had to be in the episode. 

Having said before that he could never direct himself because he couldn't bare to look at his face, he chose to put that aside when he was inspired to write Barry after visiting the set of Better Call Saul. The dark, violent humour that Barry is full of indeed has a Better Call Saul quality, and the series has been a great success, as highlighted by its three Emmys!

Check out the trailer here:

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6. Billy Bob Thornton – Sling Blade

Miramax Films

Billy's initial vision for the main character, Karl, in Sling Blade came when he was working on a cable movie and was pretty down about his prospects, saying "I saw all the 'real' actors around me, people who had a real job — I was basically an extra with a couple of lines—I just felt depressed." He remembers coming up with the character while looking into a mirror: 

"I went into the trailer at lunchtime and started looking at myself in the mirror, making faces at myself. [...] I don’t know what I said. And then I did that opening monologue, all at once, and I didn’t know where it came from. It was kind of spooky."

While the film isn't autobiographical, a lot of the characters in the movie are based on people Billy knew, and the stories are inspired by things that happened where he was brought up. Billy started performing it as a one-man show, but with help from his agent, he was able to make it into a movie that he wrote, directed, and starred in. The movie won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, adapted from the show, and Billy was also nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role.  

Watch the trailer here:

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7. Nia Vardalos – My Big Fat Greek Wedding

IFC Films

Nia's inspiration for the movie was her own experiences growing up in a large but close Greek family. Despite gaining somewhat of a cult following, the movie was initially rejected, as Nia shared on Twitter:

"When agents and managers said my script wasn’t good and actors shouldn’t write, I recall wondering why they were angry. They fired me. So, I changed the material into a solo stage show. Rita Wilson saw the play and said, 'This should be a movie'”

Thankfully Rita Wilson decided to help make it happen, and Nia herself starred as the lead in a movie that many would find inspiring due to its honest storytelling and personality. She stressed the importance of never giving up, saying: "You can’t make anyone embrace change, marginalised voices or new ideas. So love yourself. And write your story."

Check out the trailer here:

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8. Emma Thompson – Sense and Sensibility

Columbia

In the mid-nineties, Emma Thompson was well aware of the dearth of interesting roles for women in Hollywood and decided to take things into her own hands. Using those hands she wrote the screenplay for Jane Austin's Sense and Sensibility, a movie with a host of punchy female roles. On starring in the movie herself, she said ”I wrote [a role]... and then I bloody well played it.” 

Emma would become the first person to win an Oscar for acting AND screenplay writing when she took home the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for Sense and Sensibility, having won Best Actress a few years previously. 

Emma would go on to write various other screenplays, some of which she'd star in too, including Nanny McPhee and Bridget Jones's Baby. 

Watch the trailer here:

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9. Seth Macfarlane – The Orville

Fox / Hulu

Seth has always been into more upbeat utopian sci-fi series, like Star Trek. In fact, before he wrote The Orville, he went to CBS and offered to have a go at the Star Trek franchise. When that didn't come to fruition, however, he decided to create his own "Phasers set to stun" type show, and thus The Orville was born. 

The show was a real passion project for Seth, who starred as Captain Ed Mercer, with him saying: "I think I’ve done more actual draft writing on the show than I ever had on the animated shows. [...] That was a real joy, and I found that the genre was something that I was really comfortable in, actually even more so than the hard comedy." 

The Orville has run for three seasons, and may still be renewed for season four. 

Here are some of Captain Mercer's best bits of season one:

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10. Mindy Kaling – The Mindy Project

Fox / Hulu

After The Office, Mindy wanted to create something of her very own – and that she did! She set out to write The Mindy Project, which she would star in too. Mindy wanted her main character to have a job that she herself could relate to, but didn't want it to be a writer because, in her own words, "no one could do comedy writer better than Tina [Fey] has in 30 Rock." 

She thus took inspiration from her mother's job as an ob-gyn doctor, which entailed working a similar amount of hours, and produced a number of "juicy" stories. Mindy also wanted her show to be less idealistic than The Office, particularly in terms of relationships.This is why there aren't really any Jim and Pam equivalent storylines, and everything in Mindy's life is more chaotic.

Here's the trailer for season one:

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11. Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo – Bridesmaids

Universal Pictures

Female-lead comedies in Hollywood were somewhat of a rarity when Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo wrote the screenplay for Bridesmaids. About the movie, Wiig said: “We wanted to write a comedy, not a female comedy, just a comedy that has a lot of women in it. There’s a difference.”

The movie was also Wiig's first leading role after being a star on SNL for years. Bridesmaids received multiple accolades including Melissa McCarthey getting nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and Wiig and Mumolo getting nominated for Best Original Screenplay.

Here's the airplane scene featuring both Kristen and Annie:

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12. Vin Diesel – Multi-Facial

Vin Diesal

This under-the-radar short film was written and directed by Vin, while he also starred in it and composed the music – talk about multitalented! This project went a long way toward landing Vin Diesel his first big break in Hollywood, with Steven Spielberg being a big fan of the film, deciding to cast Vin in Saving Private Ryan. 

According to Vin, Steven was disappointed not to have seen him continue to do more directing, saying to Vin: "When I wrote the role for you in ‘Saving Private Ryan,’ I was obviously employing the actor, but I was also secretly championing the director in you, and you have not directed enough."

Despite being only 21 minutes long, Multi-Facial had a lasting impact on Vin Diesel's career.

You can watch the whole short here:

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13. Lena Dunham – Tiny Furniture

IFC Films

Lena's first screenplay was based very much on her own life – in Tiny Furniture she played Aura, who moves back in with her family to figure out what she's doing with her life. Leena's mother and sisters also act in the film, playing fictionalised versions of themselves. 

The movie, which won various awards, launched Leena's career, and two years later the TV series Girls came out, which Leena also created and starred in, winning her a Golden Globe too!

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14. Tina Fey – 30 Rock

NBC

Tina took all the seven years of experience she'd gained writing for SNL into the creation of 30 Rock. She decided it was time to flex her comedic muscles, and boy did she! 30 Rock would solidify her place as a heavyweight in comedy writing, in which she also starred as Liz Lemon. 

The show ran for seven seasons, winning a host of Emmy awards in the meantime. Tina would go on to write and star in other hugely popular movies and TV shows, including Mean Girls, and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. 

Here's some of her best one-liners from the show:

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15. Phoebe Waller-Bridge – Fleabag

BBC 1

Phoebe, who didn't actually base Fleabag on herself, wrote the play when she was in a state of flux. Speaking about how the character came about she said this: 

"When I was feeling at my most down and angry and rageful standing at the precipice of whatever that is in your mind and I looked at the bottom of the chasm and the very bottom was Fleabag. So I was like 'I'm going to write her to stop me from becoming her.'"

The one-woman show was written and performed by Pheobe at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where it won the famous Fringe First Award. That really kickstarted things for Pheobe, who went on to star in the TV adaptation of Fleabag that would make her an international sensation. 

Her stardom has only risen since then of course, with her going on to be a writer on Killing Eve and being one of the writers for No Time To Die. 

Here are some of the best bits of season one of Fleabag:

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16. Rob Delaney and Sharon Horgan – Catastrophe

Channel 4

When the pair decided to write a show, each had the same goal – to make something that they could relate to, and something that they actually wanted to make. Talking about this, Sharon said: "We wanted to make a brutally honest relationship comedy, and use comedy to talk about tricky things." 

Rob was on the same page, saying that the industry is so tough, so if you're going to try to do something, you may as well go for exactly what you want: "It’s so hard to get a show made. You might as well talk about exactly what you want to talk about."

The two drew from their own personal experiences with pregnancy, parenthood, and their different backgrounds to create a comedy show that would also deal with serious issues without the rose-tinted glasses, as Rob put it: "A show that purports to be about real life but doesn’t have those things to me wouldn’t be a real show."

The show was a great success, running for four seasons!

Check out the trailer here:

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17. Tom Hanks – That Thing You Do

20th Century Fox

Ever since he was a child, Tom Hanks had a very puzzling and specific thought: What was it like for the drummer who replaced Ringo Starr for The Beatles' tour of Australia? Well, while he was filming Forest Gump, he decided it was time to put some thought into it. 

The screenplay had been knocking around in his mind for a while but hadn't ever been fully completed, but three years on, he made his directorial and screenwriting debut with That Thing You Do. Tom spent a lot of time considering the music that would go into the movie, in which he also played a role as the manager, and that time clearly paid off with the song That Thing You Do! becoming a hit in its own right. 

Here's the band playing in the movie:

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18. Rashida Jones and Will McCormack – Celeste and Jesse

Sony Pictures Classics

For their first foray into screenwriting, Rashida and Will wanted to create a film that really got to the heart of issues they, and others had felt. Rashida, describing their motivations, said this: “We wrote it from what we knew, what we experienced individually, and what people around us were experiencing.”

The dramedy sought to highlight the more harmful side of love, something the pair had witnessed amongst their friends and felt themselves. Rashida starred as Celeste who is going through what starts out as an amicable divorce with her husband, played by Andy Samberg, 

Check out the trailer here:

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What are your fave times an actor both starred and wrote something? Let us know in the comments below!