Bob Roberts, Postcards From the Edge, Big Night, Sense & Sensibility, Dangerous Minds, Dead Man Walking, Sling Blade, Independence Day...All these films and many others, different in voice and scope, have one thing in common--other than the fact that most of them were nominated for multiple awards: They were all written by actors, many of whom see acting as their primary profession.

Needing another outlet for their creativity, more and more actors are penning their own screenplays and garnering awards, respect and a second career along the way. Some have found their new profession so satisfying, they've given up life in front of the camera altogether.

Zorianna Kit talked to several actor/writers and discovered that despite their fame in front of the camera, what they really want to do is write...

Tim Robbins, Stanley Tucci, Todd Graff, Dean Devlin, Billy Bob Thornton and Carrie Fisher were first known in Hollywood as actors before turning to screenwriting. Whereas Devlin and Graff traded their acting shoes for writing, Fisher still occasionally accepts a small role here and there, most recently in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery. Robbins, Tucci and Thornton juggle both professions, often combining the two on the same project. Whether or not they continue to work in front of the camera today, there's no denying the impact their acting background has on their screenwriting careers, and vice versa.

Having acted out other people's dialogue, these screenwriters have become extremely sensitive in their choice of words when writing today. "Being an actor first, that's how I came to understand dialogue," says Robbins, who adapted Dead Man Walking and wrote and starred in Bob Roberts. "I always write from an actor's perspective, which is writing dialogue that fits comfortably into one's mouth, as opposed to dialogue that is strained and defective."

By virtue of reading scripts as actors, they've distinguished the difference between good and bad dialogue. "I was encountering a lot of scripts where the dialogue seemed imposed upon the characters," says Tucci, co-writer and star of Big Night. "The dialogue didn't come from the characters--it was the writer stuffing these words into their mouths and they were forced to spit them back out again. Trying to act them was torturous."

Still, it is their job to make script dialogue believable when acting, and Fisher (Postcards From the Edge), whose specialty is rewriting scripts, applies this same rule when she writes. "When you're given a script and in some cases, it's not a good script, you have to make it work," says Fisher. "The acting experience has helped with the writing because you make dialogue that doesn't exactly work, work. Writing, you envision what would be easiest for you to say because you've been there." Graff, the writer of such films as Used People and Angie, as well as the upcoming The Crowded Room and Dream Girls, is also a Tony-nominated theater actor, familiar to moviegoers as the rat-carrying submariner in The Abyss, and he agrees with Fisher. "I try hard not to put words in an actor's mouth that I wouldn't want to say myself if I was acting the role," he says.

In real life, notes Fisher, people "don't talk straight out in sentences, but in very particular ways." The trouble is, though, scripts don't always reflect that diversity.

"Sometimes words look really good on paper," says Thornton. "They're flowery, intense and just look great and when you read them and it's like, 'Wow, that's beautiful.' But then as an actor, you try to say those words, and they don't sound right. So when I write, I don't try to make it look good on paper, I write for it to sound good when it's said."

If it doesn't look good on paper, however, non-actors involved in the movie, such as producers and executives, may not understand the script. That's what brings back the actor in Dean Devlin. "Very often I'll write dialogue and people around me will not get it, so I'll perform it," says Devlin, a former actor with such credits as TV's L.A. Law. "My acting background enables me to write certain types of dialogue that may not read well, but play well. What it also does is give me the opportunity to put the scene on its feet even before it's put on paper."

Fisher can instantly create scenes on paper having not only acted, but performed as a chorus girl in her mother's shows. "The music gave me this particular sense of how sentences and scenes rhythm out and I feel that when I'm acting," she says. "When I write, I feel where the beats are too and I feel the acting as well. There's definitely a rhythm to the way I write."

Tucci prefers to perform out loud as he's writing, complete with hand gestures and facial expressions. "God forbid should anyone walk in and cart me away," he jokes. But for him, it's the only way because, "if it doesn't feel truthful coming out of my mouth, it's probably not going to work."

Indeed, believable dialogue creates believable characters. Actors, explains Graff, need to understand their characters' motivations, no matter how small the role is. And that knowledge comes out in his writing. "Having acted, I make sure that I pay attention to each character, knowing that at some point an actor's gonna have to act it and he's gonna have the same questions as the lead actor is going to have," says Graff. "Doing that comes more easily to me having acted than it would if I didn't."

Robbins too, painstakingly goes over each character when he writes, keeping in mind how he would speak the lines if he were the actor playing the role. When he finishes the first draft, he reads through the script, not as a writer, but as an actor considering a possible role. "I'll read through it and say, 'Well this character doesn't make sense because of this...,' or 'What if that character had another beat here?' because then I could understand how to play it as an actor. I take it character by character that way, and try to imagine what it's like for the actor who's been offered the part to read. In that perspective, you realize some weaknesses."

Robbins is not shy about having other actors included in his process, as he did in the early drafts of Dead Man Walking with Susan Sarandon, who also starred in the film. "It's very beneficial because ideally you have the perspective of someone who actually has to get in front of the camera and say these lines that will be on celluloid forever," says Robbins. "You want to get it right. You have a stake in wanting to get it right. Other people are not up there with their ass on the line, so they don't have much of a stake and they'll live with something if it just sounds kinda right.

"I guarantee, this is the best perspective," he continues, "because ultimately, it's gonna be the actors that are going to have to portray the emotional life of these characters, and hence, the movie."

Sometimes, though, the two sides can be at odds with each other, as Robbins found out. "If I read through it as an actor and say, 'Well, this character needs more of a resolution in the third act,' the writer in me thinks, 'Can that character sustain a third act with all these other characters?'" The conflict arises when "the actor in you wants all the parts to be well rounded, but sometimes the script can't take that much because some characters are supporting characters only," he says.