Jason Bateman became an actor so he could transition into filmmaking.
The 44-year-old star's directorial debut 'Bad Words' has just been screened at the Toronto Film Festival, and he admitted working behind the camera was always his main ambition.
He told The Hollywood Reporter: "Quite simply, I said to my agent, 'Please don't wait for me to have an opening in my acting schedule to pursue the directing stuff. Understand that I'm only acting to create the kind of relevance or capital necessary to get a directing job'.
"It's really the only reason I've been acting for the last 20 years of this career. I told him, 'I'm not gonna know when that moment is. I don't have any objectivity. You're gonna need to let me know when the community is ready to support me as a director.' "
Jason - who also stars in the movie - admitted he may not have made the switch to directing earlier in his career, but is happy to now his "work ethic" has coincided with his availability.
He explained: "It's certainly appropriate that I should look for a different job. Usually people, after 30 years, are either retiring or looking for a promotion or a career change of some sort.
"It's a job that I've had my eye on for a long, long time as someone who is a big fan of the process of creating fake worlds.
"Maybe if I'd been given this opportunity 20 years ago, I may have said, 'Oh, who wants to work that hard? Just let me learn my lines and show up on the set and hit my mark'. But my work ethic and my ambition are equal to my access right now, which is a really fortunate thing."
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