Joel Edgerton has liked being an actor to being a child, and a director to being the parent on set, telling RTÉ Entertainment that his move towards directing has taught him a lot about acting in the process.
Edgerton, who can next be seen alongside Jennifer Lawrence in spy drama Red Sparrow, has directed two shorts and two feature films and loves "the challenge" of being behind the camera after so many years in front of it.
"I love being behind the camera, I love the challenge of it," he told RTÉ Entertainment.
"I think being an actor is like being a child; you literally get out of bed in your pyjamas, go to work and they'll make you up and put a costume on you and as long as you can say your words in the right order and do all that stuff… But you've got to work to play, then you go home and you have no responsibility.
"Being a director is having all the responsibility, so it's like being a parent. And I love the ability that I can go from one to the other, I don't know that I'd like to direct all the time, but I certainly learn a lot about acting by doing it, and I learn a lot about directing by being an actor."
The 43-year-old star will soon be seen in his brother Nash Edgerton's action comedy Gringo (March 9), and he said there is more pressure when you're working on a comedy than on a drama.
"Because I'm not that funny, they don't really let me in comedies that often, and when they do, they regret it. My brother actually just made a comedy, it comes out in a week or two, and I did find making that that I was like, 'Wow there's so much pressure here' because you don't know if it's funny or not," Edgerton said.
"At least if you're doing a stand-up show in a bar or something, you're immediately hearing the audience laugh or not laugh. On a movie set, even if the crew tell you you're being funny, you don't know if that's necessarily so.
"Drama, I feel safer doing because there's no immediate expectation of something, but that being said, when you're on set doing something heavy, I feel the need to throw things, shake things off and have a bit of fun in between, and I like to do that. As long as it doesn't get in the way of the work, I think it's important to have a laugh."
Red Sparrow hits cinemas on March 1.
Watch our interviews with Joel Edgerton, his Red Sparrow co-star Matthias Schoenaerts and director Francis Lawrence:
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