Los Angeles ? Nicolas Cage, George Clooney and Denzel Washington are among a rush of big-name actors making directing debuts in movies.

The appeal of directing, they say, is partly to flex their muscles behind the camera and partly to use their clout to get unconventional projects into production.

“I loved the screenplay and thought it wasn’t going to get made,” Clooney said of his “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.” It features Sam Rockwell as game-show host Chuck Barris, who claimed in his fanciful “autobiography” that he doubled as a CIA hitman.

“There was a feeling that if I came on board and directed it for (bottom-scale wages) and got some A-list actors to work for virtually nothing, then we thought they’d make the movie,” Clooney said.

Washington’s “Antwone Fisher” is based on the true story of a volatile sailor (Derek Luke) struggling to overcome a troubled past. Cage’s “Sonny” stars James Franco as a newly discharged soldier reluctantly drawn back into his pre-Army life as a gigolo.

Denzel Washington directs and stars in Antwone

Also opening before year’s end is “Love Liza,” starring Philip Seymour Hoffman in the directing debut of Todd Louiso, most recently seen as John Cusack’s meek record-store clerk in “High Fidelity.”

Next year brings directing debuts by John Malkovich with “The Dancer Upstairs,” Matt Dillon with “City of Ghosts,” Steve Guttenberg with “P.S. Your Cat Is Dead” and Salma Hayek with the cable-TV movie “The Maldonado Miracle.”

Even in the early days of film, performers such as Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton moved into directing to control their material better.

Some actors have directed with mundane results, including John Wayne (“The Alamo,” “The Green Berets”), Jack Nicholson (“Goin’ South,” “The Two Jakes”) and Sally Field (“Beautiful”).

Yet many have succeeded brilliantly. Robert Redford (“Ordinary People”), Clint Eastwood (“Unforgiven”), Kevin Costner (“Dances With Wolves”) and Mel Gibson (“Braveheart”) won best-director Academy Awards.

“You look at it as protecting those films and filmmakers,” Clooney said. “If you get to a place where you can use your power for good, why not do that? They take it away from you anyway eventually — whatever power you have is going to go away. But why not be able to say, ‘You know, there was about nine years there where we really pushed the envelope and got some interesting stuff made’?”