But preferably, still movie related.
I was about to turn my computer off, but thought of this while I was finishing up a documentary on George Stevens and it sprung up this idea. I haven’t given it much thought, but the first example was Martin Scorsese’s work on restoring movies.
George Miller (Mad Max, Babe: Pig in the City, The Witches of Eastwick, etc.) is actually Dr. George Miller; he was a physician before his filmmaking career took off.
I don’t know if it’s too close to directing, but many directors were excellent writers also. The best example being Billy Wilder, who stumbled as a fledgling reporter into screenwriting and became director, one of the greatest, still (co)writing many of his films.
Too late to edit: there are of course also some directors who are also great actors: who is Clint Eastwood? A famous actor or director?
Jack Cardiff – Outstanding Technicolor cinematographer who became a generally undistinguished director. He returned to his former profession after directing The Mutations (1974), a film curiously unmentioned in the otherwise fine documentary, *Cameraman: The life and Work of Jack Cardiff *(2010).
Harold Clurman and Max Reinhardt – famous stage directors who (co-)directed one film each.
William Cameron Menzies – Art director turned director; first one to win an Oscar in Art Direction (1927).
Orson Welles – As well-known in the theater and radio as in cinema. Also helped sell no wine before its time.
Woody Allen and Roman Polanski – directors now better known for events in their off-screen lives.
Nobel Laureate Bob Dylan – two directing credits, but better known in some other field (stamp collecting?)
George Lucas and Steven Spielberg – the film and non-film-related activities of both have long since eclipsed their impacts as directors.
Barry Sonnenfeld - a talented cinematographer before he became a mediocre director
Gordon Parks directed The Learning Tree, Shaft, Shaft’s Big Score, and a few other popular movies, but his most important work is as a photographer. He also was a musician and composer, author, and painter.
Specifically, in Lucas’s case, even beyond creating one of the industry’s most popular and commercially-successful franchises in Star Wars, he was also responsible for the founding of three companies which had huge impacts on motion picture production: Industrial Light & Magic, Pixar, and THX.
Norman Mailer directed a couple of films, but they were in no sense popular.
Diane Keaton directed some films, plus TV episodes (including Twin Peaks)
Ida Lupino was a successful actress of the 40s, best known for her role opposite Bogart in High Sierra. She also directed seven films and over 30 TV episodes.
Howard Hughes and airplanes
I was going to say George Lucas for the fact that he has help make the home movie watching experience as good as it currently is.
Quite accomplished beyond directing a popular monkey movie.
Huh. I don’t know why, but I always thought that ILM was a pre-existing effects company that Lucas hired to do the effects work on Star Wars. I had no idea that he was directly involved in their creation.
I don’t know if it counts as “important work” but my first exposure to Peter Bogdanovich was as Tony Soprano’s psychiatrist’s psychiatrist. For that matter, I don’t know if he counts as a “popular director”, but I just watched Paper Moon for the first time a few days ago and it was very good.
I recall reading about the production of Star Wars, and the fact that, at a certain point, 20th Century Fox was extremely anxious, as Lucas had burned through a large proportion of his budget in setting up ILM, without (at that point) having actually filmed any footage for the movie.
Bogdanovich was a well-respected film critic and wrote critical studies of Orson Welles, John Ford, Howard Hawks, and John Ford before he decided to go into films. He also fits as a popular director, with The Last Picture Show winning several Oscars and having success with What’s Up Doc? and Paper Moon.
Albert Lamorisse. A French filmmaker, best known for the short film “The Red Balloon”, which he won an Oscar for. I imagine a lot of people remember this film, as it was a pretty popular school viewing choice in the 70s and 80s at least, but I’m guessing pretty much everyone is at least aware of the boardgame Risk, which he also created.
Francois Truffaut is famous for directing films like The 400 Blows (and sequels) *Jules and Jim, Fahrenheit 451, * and Day for Night (Best Foreign Film Oscar). Like Bogdanovich, he started out as a film critic and a noted proponent of the auteur theory.
Jean-Luc Godard also was a critic promoting the auteur theory before switching to directing.
And, of course, many directors started out as actors. For example, Ron Howard, Rob Reiner, and Penny Marshall were all sitcom stars before they became acclaimed film directors.
Nora Ephron was a well known magazine and newspaper writer before becoming a director.