Chris Pine: Patty Jenkins told me to try directing

2023 promises to be a very big year for Chris Pine. This month, “Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves,” an adaptation of the popular role-playing game he created and stars in, is set to debut at SXSW. Then later this year he releases his directorial debut, the noir comedy “Poolman,” in which he plays, you guessed it, a man who cleans pools.

The project marks a major creative step for the longtime action star — and she couldn’t have done it without the “Wonder Woman” director. In a new interview NoblePine explained that he decided to try directing after Patty Jenkins suggested it to him.

“He said he felt like I was really bored,” Pine said. “Maybe I felt uninspired, doing the same old trick.”

Jenkins similarly recalled the advice he gave Pine: “You’ve got to do something else on these tent poles besides waiting in the trailer,” he said.

The “Wonder Woman” director speculated that Pine’s childhood experience of his actor father surviving on one-off television roles made him hesitant to take on more ambitious projects.

“That’s what Chris thought was being an actor,” he said. “So it’s uncomfortable to step out of that to be A, a huge movie star, but then B, going even further to be a big artist. There’s something about Chris being content with where he’s at in his career—I’m a traveling actor, I’m just happy to be here—that Chris can’t stop applying to himself. There’s always a part of it where I’m lucky to be offered anything.”

Pine seemed to echo that sentiment, explaining that it took him a while to see himself as something bigger than an actor hustling for gigs. Now that she’s more comfortable doing interesting work, she’s excited to see where her creative development takes her.

“It’s been written on me since I was twenty-one, twenty-two,” he said. “You just embody it until you’ve been in the business long enough and things start to change. For a long time I felt like I had the clothes on, but I was a good enough mimic to pull them off. Then you start to mold these characters to yourself and people start to see what you’re doing and maybe even change the archetypes to fit you.

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