ANNA KENDRICK

“Woman of the Hour”

Kendrick has long dreamed of directing — not that she’d said that out loud to anyone else or fully admitted it to herself.

“I felt too vulnerable to ever really say that it was something that I wanted, because then I’d have to feel the impact of, ‘What if I never get the opportunity?’” Kendrick tells Variety.

The Oscar-nominated actor (and one of Variety’s 2007 10 Actors to Watch) had been attached for nearly two years to “Woman of the Hour” — a rippedfrom-the-headlines drama about a serial killer who appeared on “The Dating Game” — when the original director departed the project. Less than six weeks before the movie went into pre-production, she offered to take the reins.

“I didn’t have time to think about what a disaster it could be,” she says, thinking back on the whirlwind 24-day shoot. Instead of a disaster, the film prompted a bidding war after its Toronto Intl. Film Festival premiere, which Netflix won in an approximately $11 million deal. Of course, there were challenges, like clomping up the bleachers in ’70s era platform heels to check the monitor in between takes of a 25-page scene. But swapping from actor to director mode didn’t prove to be as difficult as people warned her it could be.

“Me and the lead of the film were always on the same page,” Kendrick jokes. “It was one less thing I had to manage.”

Now that her debut has been deemed a success, Kendrick aims to continue directing and she’s keeping her options open.

“I’ve been offered some other genre-type films and it always comes with this caveat, like ‘We totally understand if you don’t want to pigeonhole yourself,’” she says. “I’ve been known as the a cappella comedy girl for 10 years. I’m not worried.”

— Angelique Jackson

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