10 Great Movies Made By Actor-Writer-Directors

4) The Tenant (Roman Polanski)

Even before Roman Polanski became a controversial figure privately, he was an enfant terrible of the screen: butchering innocents in Macbeth, cooking up satanic myths in Rosemary’s Baby, and personally playing the “midget” who slices Nicholson’s nose in Chinatown. The latter’s probably Polanski’s most memorable appearance in front of the camera, but it’s no more than a cameo. In The Tenant, however, Polanski is very much the star.

As with Do the Right Thing, Polanski’s decision to cast himself in The Tenant gives the film a more personal angle. In this case, it turns the movie into a meta-study of the filmmaker himself. It’s not just arty cerebral fare though: The Tenant, claustrophobically set almost entirely in one Parisian apartment block, is the kind of brave psycho-horror that might find you questioning the director’s sanity.