Writers who became Actors

Marguerite Duras   (4 April 1914 – 3 March 1996)  French novelist, playwright, scriptwriter, essayist and experimental filmmaker.
She is most widely known for writing the 1959 film Hiroshima mon amour.

Duras had a 53-year literary career, the author of many novels she was among the most widely read French writers of the post-war era, her first published novel was in 1943 Les Impudents .  
Duras wrote plays, films, essays and short fiction in over 70 works,  her best-selling, highly fictionalized autobiographical work L'Amant (1984), The Lover, was adapted for a highly acclaimed film in 1992, her plays continue to be performed regularly today in France.

The writing style of Duras is characterized with a simple, terse writing style. provocative in her use of language, the mysteries of love and sex consumed her, full of intense emotions and internal experiences there was no room for sentimentality in her works.

 Duras considered her words to be sacrosanct, she often had stormy dealings with movie directors who adapted her novels, among them Peter Brook, Tony Richardson and Jules Dassin.  
Duras began film directing in 1967 and is credited with 19 films, she also acted and narrated in nine of her own challenging works, 
Pictured below with co-star Gérard Depardieu, Le camion (1977)  

  Marguerite Duras wrote of her work in cinema and theatre
"Acting doesn't bring anything to a text... On the contrary, it detracts from it,  lessens its immediacy and depth, weakens its muscles and dilutes its blood."