Known as both an actor's director and a helmer of taut suspenseful "mood pieces", Alan J Pakula became interested in a show business career after a summer job working in the office of agent Leland Hayward. He began to hone his craft as a director while an undergraduate at Yale and began his film career in earnest as an assistant in the Warner Bros. cartoon department in 1949. After apprenticing as an assistant to writer-producer-director Don Hartman, Pakula graduated to producer status at Paramount with the 1957 baseball psychodrama "Fear Strikes Out". The film marked the first of seven collaborations with director Robert Mulligan which included the Oscar-nominated Best Picture "To Kill a Mockingbird" (1962), the unsuccessful Hollywood backstage melodrama "Inside Daisy Clover" (1965) and the box-office hit "Up the Down Staircase" (1967).
Pakula launched his own directorial career with the sensitive, if somewhat static melodrama, "The Sterile Cuckoo" (1969) that yielded a strong Oscar-nominated performance from Liza Minnelli. Two years, later, he hit his stride with "Klute" (1971), a moody psychological thriller with Donald Sutherland as a private detective protecting Oscar-winner Jane Fonda as a Manhattan call girl. The underrated, gorgeously shot "Love and Pain and the Whole Damn Thing" (1973) focused on the unlikely relationship between a dying woman (Maggie Smith) and a much younger man (Timothy Bottoms). Along with photographer Gordon Willis and production designer George Jenkins, he provided a brilliant "look" for the gripping political thriller "The Parallax View" (1974). This Warren Beatty vehicle about a reporter who accidentally uncovers an assassination plot was something of a warm-up for 1976's factual "All the President's Men". Assembling the same production team, he created a Washington that was authentic yet frightening and by concentrating on the dynamics between reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein (played by Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman) sustained the suspense of a story of which the audience already knew the ending. The film earned eight Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director and took home four statuettes, including one for supporting actor Jason Robards.
Now established as a bankable director in Hollywood, Pakula turned his attentions to a Western set in the 1940s. Reteaming with Jane Fonda and Jason Robards, the director earned mixed reviews for his efforts. "Starting Over" (1979), with its strong James L Brooks script, was a serio-comic look at the aftermath of divorce and featured strong turns by Burt Reynolds as the newly single journalist, Candice Bergen as his tone-deaf ex-wife who harbors dreams of a singing career and Jill Clayburgh as his new lover. "Rollover" (1981) marked a third teaming with Fonda, this time playing the widow of a corporate executive involved in high-stakes financial dealings.
Pakula branched into screenwriting with his critically-acclaimed (and Oscar-nominated) adaptation of William Styron's Holocaust drama "Sophie's Choice" (1983). The heart of the film, though, was Meryl Streep's luminous Oscar-winning portrayal of a concentration camp survivor romanced by a mentally unstable Jew (Kevin Kline) and a Southern would-be author (Peter MacNichol). Powerfully realized, "Sophie's Choice" was a mature look at a difficult subject. He later wrote his first original screenplay, the autobiographical "See You in the Morning" (1989), about a blended family. Helming and scripting (with Frank Pierson) the film version of Scott Turow's best-selling thriller "Presumed Innocent" (1990) afforded him the opportunity to combine the familiar themes of social and political tensions and with the sexual anxiety and although the result fell short of its potential for greatness, it is still a powerful addition to Pakula's legacy as an intelligent and literate filmmaker. (1993's "Consenting Adults" was also in the same vein.) He also wrote, directed and produced "The Pelican Brief" (1993), a loose and rather superficial adaptation of the John Grisham novel. Pakula returned to the world of hired gun to helm "The Devil's Own" (1997), about an Irish terrorist taken in by a cop and his family who know nothing of his background. The troubled production made headlines during and after filming (co-star Brad Pitt badmouthed the script) but audiences flocked to see the pairing of Pitt and Harrison Ford in the thriller.