Embeth Davidtz never set out to become a director.

The actress, long admired for her work in films such as “Schindler’s List,” “Junebug” and “Matilda,” stumbled into filmmaking almost by accident — only to discover she loved it more than the career that made her famous.

“Honestly, it ended up being my favorite part of it — directing,” Davidtz says. “I loathed acting in this, really.”

Her directorial debut, “Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight,” which was distributed by Sony Pictures Classics, is adapted from Alexandra Fuller’s memoir. It tells the story of a white family living in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) during the Bush War; offering a raw, tactile portrait of childhood shaped by instability, danger and inherited prejudice.

Davidtz’s debut arrives in what may be the strongest year for actress-turned-directors in recent memory. Alongside films such as Kate Winslet’s “Goodbye June” and Kristen Stewart’s “The Chronology of Water,” “Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight” positions her as a viable contender for the Directors Guild of America’s First-Time Feature Film Award.

However, getting the movie made required Davidtz to do something she had never attempted: write the screenplay herself.

After surviving breast cancer and feeling ready to return to work, she reread Fuller’s book and felt its urgency. “I couldn’t find a writer. No one understood it,” she recalls. “So I just sat down — writing, never written before — to teach myself. It was slow.” What followed were roughly 20 drafts over many years.

“What I like about this is I can disappear and cobble something together again,” she says. “It makes me happy and doesn’t put me out in the fray.”

Lexi Venter, Embeth Davidtz, Rob van Vuuren in “Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight” ©Sony Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection

The film is told through the eyes of young Bobo (Lexi Venter), whose observations cut through the adult world’s contradictions. Casting her proved to be Davidtz’s greatest challenge — and the key to unlocking the movie.

“I hired a casting director and said, ‘Here’s my brief: non-actors, everyone who’s never acted before,’” she says. She wanted unvarnished authenticity, someone with “a wildness in her.”

When she finally saw McGuire, she saw not just talent — but herself. “When I saw her face, that’s my face,” she says, showing a side-by-side comparison on her cellphone. “More also, this cinematic quality to that face.”

But McGuire struggled to memorize lines traditionally. “The minute I’d give her a scene to learn, we had a problem,” Davidtz says. Her solution was to shoot with two cameras running nearly nonstop, limit the child’s workday to three hours and craft the performance in the edit.

“I didn’t have to find a little kid to play a leopard cub. I found a leopard cub,” she says. “And then I just filmed a leopard.”

Among the most fascinating revelations were the parts Davidtz passed on throughout her career.

One, in particular, stands out: Todd Haynes’ “Safe,” the role that became one of Julianne Moore’s defining performances.

“I had just come off ‘Schindler’s.’ I’m going to be going into the same place, not looking,” she says, explaining why she turned it down. It is, she admits, a regret she carries.

“I have to live with the regret. I said no to that, and that’s the road,” she says. “Because I ended up on a different road with this husband, these children, this life that I love. And I got to do this, which is closer to who I am.”

She passed on other projects too, including Christopher Hampton’s “The Secret Agent” — at her agent Brian Lourd’s urging — in order to take the Danny DeVito-directed “Matilda.” “He said, ‘You don’t fuck around. You are going to do ‘Matilda.’ This is a much more commercial film.’”

Looking back, she concedes she didn’t know how to steer a Hollywood career. “I showed up going, I can now pick anything I wanted for the rest of my life,” she says. “And I didn’t know what I wanted.”

Directing has given Davidtz something she didn’t know she was missing. That was purpose.

“I found something else that I loved,” she says. “Something about that old way, my feet didn’t fit into that shoe.”

Writing, she admits, is lonely. Directing demands carrying “everything on my shoulders.” But it also fits her in a way acting never quite did. “At 60 years old, this feels like an enormous privilege to be able to do it.”

Her transition echoes that of Carrie Fisher, an actress pigeonholed by iconic work who reinvented herself as a respected writer. Davidtz, too, is emerging as a filmmaker with a clear point of view.

Her influences include Jane Campion, Sofia Coppola and Steven Spielberg, particularly for the way they frame children’s emotional worlds. And she’s already deep into her next project: adapting a short story she’s “almost done making a deal on,” while writing original material focused on “female stories, but with a bit of a twist.”

The actress who once navigated Hollywood with uncertainty has found her true creative home behind the camera — shaping stories only she can tell.

“Writing is so lonely,” she admits. “But something about directing; it fits better.”