Jackie Earle Haley makes directorial debut with ‘Criminal Activities’

Even during his 13-year self-imposed exile from Hollywood, Jackie Earle Haley knew that someday he wanted to sit in the director’s chair. In his years away from the spotlight, in between odd jobs to pay the bills, he tried his hand at small industrial films and commercials while living in Texas.

At long last, the 54-year-old actor has gotten his chance for the big-time. Mr. Haley’s directorial debut, “Criminal Activities,” opens Friday at the AMC Hoffman Center 22 in Alexandria, Virginia, — a neo-noir crooks-and-crooked cops drama starring John Travolta, Michael Pitt and Mr. Haley himself as Gerry, a quipping mob enforcer.

“Producer Wayne Allan Rice, who’s married to my manager, felt that I could direct this movie,” Mr. Haley told The Washington Times. “He called and said, ’If you don’t like the script, I’ll understand.’ I read the script, I just absolutely loved it, called him back in a few hours, and we were off and running.”

“Criminal Activities” follows the high-tension story of four high school pals who come together at a classmate’s funeral. One of them entreats the others into a potentially lucrative stock deal, and the four go all-in for a big-time payoff. However, things don’t go as planned, and one of the boys was loaned his share of cash for the deal by a smiling mobster (Mr. Travolta), who demands the young men undertake a shady assignment for him as payment.

While it was his first time directing, in an acting career spanning decades, Mr. Haley had the opportunity to study at the shoulders of some of the industry’s titans.

“I’m sure that some of that had to have washed off on me,” he said, adding that his years of making industrial films during his Hollywood banishment further prepared him. “Being a commercial director doesn’t always translate into being able to direct a movie, but I think that when you combine that experience with all my years of acting in movies, those two things just dovetail together. And it really felt like during the process that I had done this before — like it felt like this was my tenth movie I’d directed, but of course it was my first.”

Mr. Haley is, above all, an actor, and thus couldn’t resist giving himself the role of Gerry. However, he said that casting decision partially came about as a fiscal concern.

“The way the producer had budgeted it, he didn’t really budget anything for [Gerry], so that character would have had to have come form a local guy, and I don’t know anyone local to Cleveland,” Mr. Haley laughed of filming on location in the Ohio city. “I probably could have found somebody, but it just made more sense for me to take that role because I was right for it. It was fun to be part of this awesome cast.”

Mr. Haley’s son Christopher, who has assisted his father prepping acting audition tapes for years, helped out on the set of “Criminal Activities.” The director said the younger Haley’s input was key into getting the most from both his performers and crew.

“We kind of talk back and forth about the takes,” he said of the family workmanship. “I’m able to do three or four takes in a row, and I can watch each one, and I’m looking for my bull**** meter to go off. “Usually [he’d] just confirm what I knew — just a little backup set of eyes on it.”

Mr. Haley first started acting as a child, perhaps best known in his salad days as the sneering teen Kelly Leak in “The Bad News Bears” films. Making the transition from child to adult actor proved difficult, and the roles he was offered were lackluster at best, completely absent at worst.

“The career kind of drifted away from me,” Mr. Haley said of his decision to finally hang up the tragicomedy mask after appearing in 1993’s all-but-forgotten “Prophet of Evil: The Ervil LeBaron Story.”

The former child star spent the next 13 years completely out of the spotlight. He moved to Texas, made industrial films and took odd jobs to pay the bills. He married for the third time in 2004 to Amelia Cruz.

And yet the call of the soundstage was still within his soul. Mr. Haley had a sense that he might like to make a second stab at acting, and used his training of making industrial films — and the help of his son — to scrape together new audition tapes to show to producers if he felt the pull to return to Tinseltown.

However, before he ever had a chance to move back west, Hollywood found him first.

“[Writer-director] Steven Zaillian was doing ’All the King’s Men’ [in 2006], and for some reason him and Sean Penn both thought of me independently of possibly playing Sugar Boy,” Mr. Haley recalled. “They found me, [but] I was in France on my honeymoon. When I got back I was real excited, because it’s almost impossible to get back in.”

Mr. Haley sent Mr. Zaillian one of his own audition tapes. Impressed, the Oscar-winning writer of “Schindler’s List” flew him out to California. After more meetings, Mr. Haley had his first film role of the new century.

Four months after “All the King’s Men” wrapped, director Todd Field cast him in “Little Children” as Ronnie J. McGorvey, a deeply troubled sex offender whose post-prison presence in a suburban neighborhood arouses both the fears and hatred of his neighbors. Mr. Haley received his first Oscar nomination for the film, which starred Kate Winslet.

“That just kind of really reignited this whole career,” Mr. Haley said of his 21st century resurgence. “This is like a second chance of a lifetime.”

The calls continued pouring in. In a two-year stretch alone Mr. Haley appeared as Rorschach in the baroque comic book adventure “Watchmen,” as the mysterious George in Martin Scorsese’s mind-bending mystery “Shutter Island” and the 2010 remake of the classic horror fantasy “A Nightmare on Elm Street” as the avenging dream spirit Freddy Krueger.

“The thing that I kind of feel good about it is that they’re all dark, but there’s still a diversity” to those unkempt roles, Mr. Haley said. “Rorschach is nothing like the type of dark character that Lonnie McGorvey is. Rorschach is a bigger-than-life comic book guy that would gladly put a meat cleaver in Ronnie’s head.

“And when it come to the chance to play Freddy Krueger, how do you say no to playing such an iconic character?”

Mr. Haley also had the chance to work with legendary director Steven Spielberg on “Lincoln” as Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens. The film, much of which was shot in Virginia, centered around the final years of the president’s life and his attempts to pass the 13th Amendment to forever banish slavery from the U.S. Mr. Haley shared several crucial scenes near the film’s end with Daniel Day-Lewis in the title role.

“It was really fun doing that one long scene with Daniel and the other guys. And, of course, working with Steven Spielberg was a real treat,” he said.

With “Criminal Activities” now in the can, Mr. Haley maintains he will continue to act and hopefully again reside in the captain’s chair behind the camera.

“I don’t have a specific type of film that I want to make as much as I just want to find really good screenplays that I respond to,” the actor said. “In my life I’ve really gotten to play some pretty iconic guys … so I feel kind of fortunate.”

“Criminal Activities” opens Friday at AMC Hoffman Center 22 in Alexandria, Virginia.