Olivia Wilde wants to direct Fast and Furious movie: ‘I can’t imagine a better job’

(Picture: Shane Anthony Sinclair/Getty for BFI) Olivia Wilde has revealed she’s harbouring a rather unexpected ambition for the next phase of her directorial career, after generating awards buzz with her sophisticated dramedy The Invite. And somebody better get Vin Diesel on the phone as the actress and filmmaker shared that she would be keen to direct a Fast and Furious movie in the future. Wilde, 42, who first broke through in television roles in the noughties on the likes of The O.C. and House, was speaking about her influences for the second film she helmed, 2022’s thriller Don’t Worry Darling, during an in-conversation event at the BFI on London’s Southbank on Sunday night. These ranged from Alfred Hitchcock to 1930s Busby Berkeley musicals, but Wilde said she also enjoyed indulging her passion for cars. ‘The car chases were fun as I love cars and would be very happy just shooting car chases forever,’ she told the audience, including Metro. ‘I’m really trying to get a job directing like The Fast and the Furious 25, just because I don’t think you need plot, you just get to drag and crash cars. I can’t imagine a better job.’ It was a desire she later returned to in the brief audience Q&A section of the evening when asked about plans for the next part of her career and any genres she would be keen to work in. (Picture: Shane Anthony Sinclair/Getty for BFI) (Picture: Everett/Shutterstock) Wilde said she was keen to return to psychological thrillers once more because she felt like she’d ‘learnt a lot and would like to try my hand at [it again]’. ‘I’m fascinated by them and then, again… I mean, Fast and the Furious! I really think – just give me a chance and I can do it! I really believe in it,’ she laughed. ‘So we’ll see, fingers crossed,’ she added, to much encouragement in the room. With 10 titles in the main series and one spin-off, the upcoming twelfth Fast and Furious film is being lined up as the first in a potential three-movie wrap-up. Stars of the frachise include Diesel, Paul Walker, Michlle Rodriguez, Dwayne Johnson, Jason Statham and Gal Gadot, while past directors are Justin Lin, Rob Cohen and Louis Leterrier. The American star, who is currently shooting her next movie, Christmas comedy Naughty, which she described as her ‘love letter’ to the late, great Rob Reiner, in London, described it as ‘an honour to be in the room’ at Sunday’s talk with the BFI. (Picture: Shane Anthony Sinclair/Getty for BFI) In 2026, not only has she directed and acted in the very well-received The Invite, but she’s also played a dominatrix in Gregg Araki’s I Want Your Sex and walked away with all the scenes she’s in (not enough) in Tony Gilroy’s musician-based drama Behemoth!, starring Pedro Pascal. Responding to the reception she’d had this year, the actor-director fittingly called it ‘wild’ and revealed how she’d changed her approach to helming a movie since her 2019 feature-length debut, the acclaimed Booksmart. ‘I feel like the shift that I made was to focus entirely on the experience I wanted to have, without any expectation or self-consciousness or fear of result. And I think that comes through maturity and the sort of ups and downs and everything you learn along the way. When you release yourself from what you hope the response to something might be, I think you approach it with a kind of fearlessness that’s very liberating. And all three of these projects, and really predominantly The Invite, have been the result of that of kind of becoming unencumbered by expectations.’ She explained that 2026 demonstrated to her ‘the actual value of what that really means’ when ‘you make things for the process and not the result’. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Wilde also said she had never set planned to direct herself as an actor, and only did so first in Don’t Worry Darling ‘out of necessity as we ran out of money and no one else [would] do it for free’. ‘It was a very different experience doing it on The Invite, where it was a whole other experience for lots of reasons. But I have never set out to direct myself. I’ve never been like, “I want to be a director so I can create incredible roles for myself”, and it’s never been the reason,’ she added. However, Wilde said she did think ‘that any director worth their salt should technically be able to play each role because you should be able to speak the language of each character truly emotionally’. (Picture: A24 via AP) With The Invite, the Rush and Tron: Legacy actress admitted that she ‘would never have cast herself’ as Angela, and nor did she think anyone else would have – but it was actually the cast, comprising of Seth Rogen, Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton, who came to her and said that ‘you are the only one who can play the role and we’re going to make you do it’. ‘I was terrified and kind of mortified by it. I felt like, does this make this somehow a narcissistic exercise? I don’t understand what this is. I wanted to create this environment for actors to play, and take care of, and now what is happening – I’m inside of it. How did I get here?’ ‘And yet, it was exactly what needed to happen to allow me to witness from the inside what they were all doing, so that I knew exactly how to film it and to take care of it. I think I had to be tapped into it on a visceral level to understand it.’ Arrow MORE: Robert Pattinson’s career hits its deserved peak with Primetime Arrow MORE: Jack Nicholson, 89, will never film another movie again: ‘He has disappeared’ Arrow MORE: Elon Musk eviscerated for his ‘garbage’ version of The Odyssey after much hype Switched On Get plugged into the week’s must-watch shows, unmissable moments, and expert reviews with Metro TV Editor Sabrina Barr.