Some directors crank out a movie every year or two. Others take an average of five or so years between projects. Then there are the anomalies, those successful helmers who can get away with unleashing one momentous work on the film industry only to drop off the radar. Adrian Lyne, director of Fatal Attraction and Hulu's Deep Water, starring Ana de Armas and Ben Affleck, is one of them.
A number of reasons can contribute to a director's absence from crafting films. Perhaps their enthusiasm has dwindled, or they haven't found the right project, but either way, Lyne and other directors came back to the industry after all.
Adrian Lyne: 20 Years Between Unfaithful (2002) And Deep Water (2022)
Arian Lyne is an auteur responsible for some of Hollywood's best erotic thrillers, and it's been 20 years since he released his last one, 2002's Unfaithful. The Diane Lane/Richard Gere movie would be followed by the director's Affleck and de Armas thriller Deep Water.
Lyne has directed some intense films with high personal stakes, and Unfaithful is no different. The film belongs to Diane Lane, who elevates the material beyond the old hat dynamic of a philandering spouse up against a jealous and unforgiving partner.
Terrence Malick: 20 Years Between Days Of Heaven (1978) And The Thin Red Line (1998)
Terrence Malick is many things, including one of the best directors Natalie Portman has worked with. He's also an auteur with a major gap in his filmography.
He directed the phenomenal Badlands (1973) and Days of Heaven (1978) then didn't make a single movie for 20 years. He's never given a distinct reason for his self-imposed hiatus, but he returned in a major way with his star-studded war epic The Thin Red Line (1998). Since then, he's only gotten more prolific but to mixed results. The Tree of Life (2011) received a handful of Oscar nominations, but the receptions of To the Wonder (2012), Knight of Cups (2015), and Song to Song (2017) were more mixed.
Sir David Lean: 14 Years Between Ryan's Daughter (1970) And A age To India (1984)
Sir David Lean took nearly a decade and a half off after releasing his penultimate film, Ryan's Daughter, in 1970. While he wasn't fully inactive behind the camera, Lost and Found: The Story of Cook's Anchor (1979) was a documentary TV movie. It wasn't until 1984 that he made his final film, Oscar darling A age to India.
Featuring a renowned cast including Judy Davis and Sir Alec Guinness, the movie received a whopping 11 Academy Award nominations. Along with the Academy Award for Best Picture, Davis and Lean received nominations for Best Actress and Best Director, respectively.
Kelly Reichardt: 12 Years Between River Of Grass (1994) And Old Joy (2006)
Kelly Reichardt released her debut film, River of Grass, to a very positive response in 1994. Then, she didn't get a film made for over a decade. According to Senses of Cinema, Reichardt said, "I had 10 years from the mid-1990s when I couldn't get a movie made. It had a lot to do with being a woman...During that time, it was impossible to get anything going, so I just said, 'F*** you!' and did Super 8 shorts instead."
She then made the low-budget Old Joy in 2006, and everything changed. Since that time, she has directed five well-reviewed movies. First was Wendy and Lucy (2008), with Michelle Williams portraying a woman experiencing homelessness searching for her lost dog. She then brought Williams back for the Western Meek's Cutoff (2010), also featuring Paul Dano and Zoe Kazan. After working with Jesse Eisenberg, Dakota Fanning, and Peter Sarsgaard on the thriller Night Moves (2013), she reunited with Williams for Certain Women (2016), also starring Kristen Stewart and Laura Dern. Most recently, she directed A24's phenomenal First Cow (2019).
Lynne Ramsay: 9 Years Between Morvern Callar (2002) And We Need To Talk About Kevin (2011)
Lynne Ramsay has been one of the You Were Never Really Here (2017).
Before that Joaquin Phoenix thriller, she broke onto the scene with the well-received Ratcatcher (1999). Then, she directed the psychological drama Morvern Callar (2002) before spending some time working on an adaptation of The Lovely Bones (2009), which ended up in the hands of Peter Jackson, instead. She didn't come back until 2011 when she directed We Need to Talk About Kevin, starring Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly, and Ezra Miller.
Stanley Kubrick: 12 Years Between Full Metal Jacket (1987) And Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
Iconic director Stanley Kubrick made several classic movies throughout his career, including three Academy Award for Best Picture nominees: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), A Clockwork Orange (1971), and Barry Lyndon (1975).
The director released his war film Eyes Wide Shut, which wasn't completed until 1999, very shortly before his death. He also did extensive work with Steven Spielberg on his 2001 film A.I. Artificial Intelligence.
Kenneth Lonergan: 11 Years Between You Can Count On Me (2000) And Margaret (2011)
Kenneth Lonergan wrote and directed the underseen 2000 drama You Can Count On Me, starring Laura Linney, Mark Ruffalo, and Rory Culkin. Linney received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress, while Lonergan received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.
The director then filmed Margaret, starring Anna Paquin and Matt Damon, half a decade later, but it then spent another five years in post-production. It opened in 2011 to initially mixed reviews but has since gone on to be seen as one of the best films of the 2010s. Lonergan then directed Manchester by the Sea in 2016, which received a similarly positive response.
Jonathan Glazer: 9 Years Between Birth (2004) And Under The Skin (2013)
Jonathan Glazer burst onto the scene with the 2000 gangster classic Sexy Beast, featuring Ben Kingsley in arguably his best performance to date. He didn't take long to direct his sophomore feature, Birth, a drama featuring Nicole Kidman as a woman who believes her deceased husband has been reincarnated as a child.
Then, without any produced project for nine years, he came back with one of the most well-reviewed films of the 2010s: her best underrated characters as an alien that seduces and kills man after man while moving through Scotland.
