Actors who turn director: what drives on-screen talent behind the camera?

Best known for his performances in Shane Meadows-helmed films such as A Room for Romeo Brass and Dead Man's Shoes, Paddy Considine is swapping his acting career – which includes stints in Hollywood in The Bourne Ultimatum and Cinderella Man – for the director's chair. His film Tyrannosaur, which he wrote and directed, was released on 7 October. But Considine isn't the first actor to sign up for a spell behind the camera. What drives other performers to make the switch?

The egoists

The need to take absolute control can be a powerful motivator. Charlie Chaplin began his film career working under the tutelage of Mack Sennett, who laid down the essentials of slapstick comedy, and directors such as Mabel Normand and Henry Lehrman. But pretty soon he was writing scripts, directing and even composing the music for his own productions. David Thomson's The New Biographical Dictionary of Film suggests Chaplin possessed "an instinct [that] lacked artistic intelligence, real human sympathy and even humour. Chaplin's isolation barred him from working with anyone else."

It's not hard to detect similar traits in Orson Welles's directorial persona. Troubled by his own perfectionism, he left behind a long list of unrealised works and an infamous blooper clip in which he combusts while trying to complete a voiceover for a poorly written and directed advert for frozen peas.

The moguls

In the 1980s, Kevin Costner could do no wrong. As one of the most bankable stars in Hollywood, thanks to Bull Durham and The Untouchables, it must have seemed natural for him to work that magic behind the camera as well. When his directorial debut Dances With Wolves scooped seven Oscars, including a best director gong, he seemed set. Sadly, the following $175m flop Waterworld and $80m turkey The Postman rather scotched that idea.

Propelled by a similar belief in his own genius, leavened with a scoop or two of unhinged ranting, fellow 80s icon Mel Gibson managed to pull off a number of coups in his rather more successful directing career. Although he's probably quite chuffed with the five Oscars awarded to Braveheart, he's probably prouder he completed feature films in Aramaic (The Passion of the Christ) and Yucatec Maya (Apocalypto). Presumably he's nursing the desire to try classical Hebrew for a projected film about the Maccabee uprising. Good luck with that one, Mel.

The independents

Sometimes, mainstream films are not enough to satisfy the creative visions of their talent. Unfailingly iconoclastic in his own films, John Cassavetes acted in at least two iconic – for very different reasons – movies: Rosemary's Baby and The Dirty Dozen. Some people say Cassavetes only took on studio roles to finance his own directorial excursions. Either way, his reputation as America's first real indie film-maker is hard to ignore.

Crispin Glover must have been inspired by Cassavetes' work. The Charlie's Angels and Back to the Future star has ploughed an equally (if not even more) wayward furrow in his own career, writing and directing What Is It?, a heady brew of nudity and racism, soundtracked by Charles Manson songs.

The game changers

Playing Monica's schlubby multimillionaire suitor in Friends brought Jon Favreau a certain amount of mainstream recognition after writing and starring in the cult retro film Swingers, but it was his directorial debut Made which really set him on the path to fame and fortune. A spiritual successor to Swingers, the Vince Vaughn-starring gangster movie allowed Favreau to lever his way into the big time. He's since turned a handsome profit with the Iron Man franchise – and reinvigorated Robert Downey Jr's career for the fourth or fifth time in the process.

Similarly, it's possible to argue that Sling Blade saved Billy Bob Thornton's career. Before the Arkansas-set drama was released, Thornton was slogging through roles in flicks such as Chopper Chicks in Zombietown. After his writing and directing debut he became – in the words of Robert Duvall – "the hillbilly Orson Welles". Thanks to some adroit manoeuvring, Miramax was persuaded to pay $10m for the film's distribution rights, thereby changing the shape of the movie industry, as American indies became an extension of the studio system in both budgetary and aesthetic terms.

The oddballs

Sometimes there's no discernible reason for an actor to get behind the camera. Always a watchable actor, Dennis Hopper overextended the freewheeling directorial style displayed in Easy Rider when he made The Last Movie. Given $1m by studio heads baffled by the success of Easy Rider, Hopper turned in a film fuelled by copious amounts of cocaine and beer. It bombed.

Slightly less dramatic, Elaine May's film-directing career came about via the stage and screenwriting. While directing Cassavetes and Peter Falk in Mikey and Nicky, she annoyed her crew by shooting 1.4m feet of film – three times as much as Gone With the Wind. One scene ended with Falk and Cassavetes running off in different directions down an alleyway – May insisted that the cameras keep rolling, even after they left the set, since "they might come back". She didn't direct for 12 years after that. Unfortunately her 1987 comeback film turned out to be Ishtar, a film so execrable it wasn't given an American DVD release until January this year.