Leading movie actors and actresses have written scripts that were made into pictures throughout the years. For instance Ben Affleck/Matt Damon's 1997 classic "Good Will Hunting." Cinema's very first leading performer to get her script (scenario) onto the screen was Mary Pickford in the January 1911 film "The Dream."
Pickford, a young 18 years old, had married actor Owen Moore on January 7, 1911 soon after she had made the jump for more money to Carl Laemmle's IMP Studios from Biograph, where the two had met. She was given the opportunity to write a couple of scenarios for the first two IMP movies she appeared. One was "Their First Misunderstanding," which was considered lost until recently when a copy was found in Keene, N.H. The other was "The Dream." Both films dealt with a philandering husband. Pickford must have had a clue of what she was getting into with Moore since his infidelity and drinking led to their eventual divorce.
"The Dream" is only one of a handful of films which exist from the year Pickford was employed by IMP. Laemmle, because he ran an independent studio, was worried about the Edison Trust, which was employing its strong-armed tactics by physically disrupting filming and distribution of movies outside the MPCC consortium. Laemmle sent his film crew along with the actors and directors to Cuba to produce a series of films so they could be far away from Edison's Ft. Lee, N.J. studios.
Interestingly, both Pickford films were directed by Thomas Ince in his debut behind the camera. Ince would go on to become one of cinema's leading Hollywood producers/directors/screenwriters who revolutionized the motion picture industry.