Oscar Nominee Viola Davis "Can't Deal" With Actors

The Doubt star says she is not one of those actors who all they really want to do is direct

You probably know that old joke, the one that says all actors eventually admit, "But what I really want to do is direct."

Is there any truth to it?

I decided to find out by chatting up some of my favorite Oscar-nominated actors at this weekend's Directors Guild of America Awards.

Doubt Oscar nominee Viola Davis has worked with Oliver Stone, Steven Soderbergh and Todd Haynes, but that doesn't mean she's been inspired to take a seat in a director's chair.

"I can't deal with actors," Davis said with a very big laugh. "I can't deal with myself. We're neurotic and miserable...I love doing what I'm doing, but while I'm doing it, I'm miserable."

Michael Shannon, who's up for best supporting actor for his work in Revolutionary Road, also insists he's not jonesing to scream "Action" anytime soon. "Maybe in like 30 years," he cringed. "I just find it to terrifying. The amount of questions you get asked all day long: What about this? What about that? Did I do this good? Is that right? I would buy earplugs and be like, 'It's enough!' "

On a completely different note, the stunning Eagle Eye starlet Michelle Monaghan is thinking less about directing, and more about...driving. She told me at the awards that she actually has a license to drive tractor-trailers! She got it when she was making Trucker, her upcoming drama in which she plays a truck driver who reunites with her estranged son.

"I was driving a 53-foot trailer," Monaghan boasted. "It's the biggest you could drive. I was out on the 405 and 10 freeways [in L.A.]. It was so much fun."