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Tony Goldwyn, grandson of Sam and son of Jr., has commendably resisted, for all his 50 years, the easy temptation to enter the family business — movie producing and distributing — but he has played profitably around the periphery of that kingdom.

These days you'll find him at the Broadway Theatre, acting — not just acting but, for the first time, singing and dancing (although he modestly undercuts the latter: "I walk around to music, but I don't exactly dance"). In this bouncy revival of the 1968 Neil Simon-Burt Bacharach-Hal David musical, Promises, Promises, he plays a rake named Sheldrake, a married gray-flannelled philanderer who is the dark cloud hovering over the course of true love for Kristin Chenoweth and Sean Hayes.

Professionally and emotionally, it's two different worlds, and Goldwyn is on top of both of them right now, pleased with these recent self-reinventions. It's his first time at bat in a Broadway musical and his fourth time out as a feature-film director.

"Remain a moving target—that's my motto," he chirps about this versatility. "It's absolute heaven. Earlier in the year I was finishing the editing on the movie in the Brill Building on 49th Street and then walking up to do my show on 53rd at the Broadway Theatre. I was doing double duty. It was really wonderful. In this business to be able to do a lot of different things — and do them at the same time — is rare."

	Tony Goldwyn in Promises, Promises
	photo by Joan Marcus

While acting remains his strong suit (62 performances, counting TV), he has 16 directing credits to his name. Prior to "Conviction," Goldwyn directed 1999's "A Walk on the Moon" with Diane Ladd and Viggo Mortensen, 2001's "Someone Like You" with Ashley Judd and Hugh Jackman and 2006's "The Last Kiss" with Zach Braff and Jucinda Barrett.

He took up directing as a way of "completing" himself. "After I'd been an actor for almost ten years, I started feeling a bit limited in what I was doing. I wanted to be doing more, to be more engaged in the process — particularly, the filmmaking process. I find acting in the theatre incredibly satisfying — a full use of myself as an artist — whereas, with film acting, I've always felt much more constrained. You come in, make your contribution, and that's it. I was fascinated with filmmaking, so I started out thinking I wanted to be a producer. That way, I could find a project I could act in and be involved more than just performing. It wasn't a desire to direct."

Nevertheless, it turned into that when he came across the script he liked. "I didn't really feel right for the role in 'A Walk on the Moon,' but I wanted to see it get made so I partnered up with Pamela Gray, the screenwriter. We worked on the script for a couple of years, and, by the time it was in good shape, I was too nervous to give it to somebody else to direct. I almost did it as a personal challenge. I thought I was being protective, but I fell in love with directing as soon as I started doing it and kept on."

His first film and his latest are the only times he took Producer credit — and both, interestingly, were scripted by Pamela Gray. "Nine years ago, my wife saw a piece on '60 Minutes' about Betty Anne Waters and her brother, Kenny. I was very moved by this brother-sister relationship, and I found out that there's a producer in New York, Andy Karsch, who'd gotten the rights to the story. We got together, he brought me in as director, and we developed this script from scratch. Through the process, as the years went on, I became a producer because I was so much the driver of the film."

Tony Goldwyn with Hilary Swank on the set of "Conviction"

photo by Ron Batzdorf