Maintain composure, recalling little look lead actor gave to unfriendly director? (13)
I believe the answer is:
keepacoolhead
'actor gave to unfriendly director?' is the definition.
I don't know anything about this answer so I can't tell whether it can be defined by this definition.
'maintain composure recalling little look lead' is the wordplay.
I cannot really understand how this works, but
'maintain' could be 'keep' (synonyms) and 'keep' is found within the answer.
'composure' could be 'cool' (cool is a kind of composure) and 'cool' is found within the answer.
'lead' could be 'ahead' (I've seen this before) and 'ahead' is found in the leftover letters.
This accounts for all the letters.
This may be the basis of the clue (or it may be nonsense).
Can you help me to learn more?