Jonah Hill feels as though acting "derailed" him from directing.
The Hollywood star has just written and directed his first movie, ‘Mid90s’, and Jonah has claimed that the success he enjoyed in front of the camera merely served to delay his switch to working behind the camera.
He explained: "You find the right compliment for the right insecure person and that could change your life. It derailed me for 16 years."
Jonah – whose new movie tells the story of a group of teenage skateboarders in 90s-era Los Angeles – also revealed how working with Martin Scorsese on ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ informed his own approach to directing.
Speaking to NPR, he shared: "I guess the main lesson I learned was that it’s OK not to judge your characters, to just show their behavior as people. And the characters in his films often do really ugly things and you still find humanity in them."
Jonah, 34, explained how he tried to incorporate some of Scorsese’s ideas into his directorial debut.
The acclaimed star said: "I like how unabashedly and unapologetically he shows human behavior, for better or worse. … Which is, I think, something that really speaks to me in art in general and something I’m going to strive to do if I’m lucky enough to get to make another film, and something that I tried to do in ‘Mid90s’."
Jonah Hill: Acting derailed me from directing
