Maggie Gyllenhaal worried she would have to ignore her ‘Crazy Heart’ director.

The actress stars in the movie with actor Jeff Bridges and admits she was delighted that Scott Cooper – who was helming his first film – surpassed her expectations.

She explained: “I loved Scott. And I went into it… At this point, often, I’ve worked with a lot of first time directors.

“To be honest, sometimes when I meet them – because it’s so hard to know how it’s going to go – I’m meeting them to see if I can do the movie alone, if I could do it without any help, if they won’t get in my way.

“But sometimes you read a great script and you think, ‘All right, I’ve got Jeff, a great part, can I just do this by myself? Is he going to get in my way?’ And that’s how I went into it with Scott.

“And after about a week, I started to kind of notice, ‘Oh, you can see me. Maybe you can help me.’ I loved him.”

Maggie also enjoyed working with Jeff because their approaches are so similar.

She added to About.com: “He and I really, we work very similarly. Scenes were never the same twice. We really kind of let ourselves react to each other in every moment. We just kind of went for it. Not everybody works that way. It was an incredible pleasure.”