Scarlett Johansson premieres directorial debut at Cannes, follows long list of actors behind the camera

Scarlett Johansson was nine years old when she made her acting debut in North, a cloying comedy-drama starring a young Elijah Wood.

It would take another 31 years and a career as one of the most high-profile celebrities in Hollywood, starring in the likes Marvel movies, and Oscar dramas Marriage Story and Jojo Rabbit, before she could stride down the red carpet on La Croisette as a director.

Her directorial feature, Eleanor the Great, premiered last night at the Cannes Film Festival, selected for the Un Certain Regard section of the line-up. Husband Colin Jost was there, but the plus-one that really mattered was 95-year-old actor June Squibb, the star of Johansson’s film.

Johansson had dared to imagine the moment. Earlier this month, she told The Hollywood Reporter, “I said to one of my producing partners, ‘If I do my job well and do what I’m supposed to do, I can imagine June walking the Croisette at age 95, starring in this incredible dramatic role that she’s so amazing in’, and I thought that would be my dream.

“To have it actually become a reality is amazing.”

Eleanor the Great stars Squibb as a nonagenarian who moves from Florida to New York City, where she meets a young journalism student after she reveals to a support group a story that captures wider attention.

Squibb had been nominated for an Oscar at the age of 84 for Nebraska, and won acclaim for the fun Sundance heist caper Thelma, wanted to make the movie, and Johansson had to get the production mounted quickly.

The script for Eleanor the Great came to her production company, These Pictures, and she knew she wanted to not just produce it, but direct it. She told THR, “Basically never, or very, very rarely have I had a script and thought, ‘Oh, I know how I can direct this’.

“It doesn’t really happen to me. This script was so moving and it had such potential that, weirdly, I felt very certain that it was something I could be capable of doing.”

Eleanor the Great wasn’t Johansson’s first time in the director’s chair. She had helmed a short film in 2009, These Vagabond Shoes, and a 2015 concert movie for Ellie Goulding.

But a feature is a big deal, and it was those early days as a child actor that planted the seed. She told Deadline that it was watching Robert Redford at work on the 1998 drama The Horse Whisperer that showed her it was possible.

“He was so actor-focused,” she said. “He was so patient and would take the time to familiarise me with where my character was at that moment, what happened, where I was coming from in the story. He would tell me the story, the whole story, all the way up until that point.

“It was so helpful. It was so insightful, too, because I was also a young actor. I was working on a big film, and a lot was going on, and he would take the time. He created an intimate space in a big, overwhelming production.”

There’s something in the experiences of actors on set that can make them great directors. Johansson has said that her decades on productions have given her a shorthand into what’s necessary to keep a production on schedule.

“I grew up on sets, and I’m a huge sucker for efficiency. Even in my job as an actor, I can read a call sheet and tell you exactly what’s going to make us fall behind and what we’ll owe the next day,” she said.

On a film set, a director has many jobs, overseeing the various departments and making calls on everything from costuming to casting. But one of their primary roles is to work with actors in eliciting the right performance.

Which is why actors, who know what it’s like to be on the side, often have an intuitive knack for directing.

Redford, of course, is among the best-known actors who hopped behind the camera to carve out a career as a filmmaker as well as a thespian. He started with the 1980 film Ordinary People, earning him an Oscar nomination for his first time as director, and has gone on to helm the likes of Lions for Lambs, Quiz Show and The Conspirator.

For a lot of actors, Redford and Clint Eastwood are the standard bearers for those who can do both. Eastwood started even earlier, in 1971, and he has been more prolific over the past 50 years, sometimes releasing one a year for a stretch.

Some of his most celebrated directorial works have included Mystic River, The Bridges of Madison County and Unforgiven. At the age of 93, last year, he released Juror No. 2.

Ben Stiller was still a young actor when he started directing, beginning with the 1994 Gen X bible Reality Bites with Winona Ryder and Ethan Hawke, and then moving on to The Cable Guy, Zoolander and Tropic Thunder. More recently, he has turned his eye to drama and won huge acclaim as the director of 11 episodes of Severance.

The list is long – Bradley Cooper with A Star is Born and Maestro, George Clooney with Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and Good Night, and Good Luck, Ben Affleck with Gone Baby Gone and The Town, and John Krasinski with A Quiet Place among them.

If you start throwing in names that have done episodes of TV shows, then that includes Regina King, Eric Stoltz, Tate Donovan, David Schwimmer, Eva Longoria, David Duchovny and Jason Bateman.

You might notice, as with many positions of power in Hollywood and beyond, that the names are weighted towards men, but Johansson has followed in the footsteps of formidable women.

Jodie Foster directed her first short at the age of 16, and then went on to make her feature debut with Little Man Tate in 1991. The Beaver and Money Monster followed, as well as episodes of Orange is the New Black, House of Cards and Black Mirror.

One of the most prominent examples in recent years is Greta Gerwig, who co-directed her first feature in 2008, Nights and Weekends, with Joe Swanberg, only two years after her acting debut.

Gerwig has made such a name for herself as a filmmaker with Lady Bird, Little Women and the box office and pop cultural phenomenon that is Barbie, that some people might even forget she was an actor first, on the likes of Frances Ha, Wiener Dog and the aborted How I Met Your Father pilot.

But Gerwig, Johansson, Emerald Fennell (also an actor) and their cohort wouldn’t have had the same opportunities if it weren’t for the other actor factor that has helped grease the wheels: that of the female celebrity producer.

Nicole Kidman this week was celebrated for her commitment to working with female directors, and if it weren’t for her, Reese Witherspoon, Margot Robbie, Emma Stone and even Johansson’s own production outfit making waves and movies, it would be that much harder.