After years of marking time by being a popular actor, Joseph Gordon-Levitt is directing his first feature—which was apparently the plan all along. "I was a child actor for years and quit at 19, went to school awhile, and a big part of why I came back was that I ultimately wanted to make movies," he tells Deadline. Having made inroads by helming a few shorts, that dream will finally be realized by directing and co-starring with Scarlett Johansson in an as-yet-untitled comedy "about a modern-day Don Juan, and his quest to become less of a 'selfish dick.' " Gordon-Levitt wrote the script himself, and it seems it's taken him this long to make the leap to feature directing only because he's been waiting for his screenwriting chops to catch up to the scale of his ambition. In fact, he says he’s written other scripts—"including one mammothy huge sprawling thing"—but this is the first one he’s felt good enough about to try making it. And of course, "I wrote myself a helluva role," even if he does say so himself.
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