Director Brian De Palma has enjoyed a career that has spanned over forty years and is best known for cinematic classics such as Carrie, Scarface and The Untouchables.The Newark born filmmaker enrolled at Columbia university with the intention of being a physics student and may not have pursed his movie career at all had it not been for the profound effect Citizen Kane and Vertigo had on him.He left his physics classes behind him enrolling instead at the Sarah Lawrence College to take up theatre.In 1963, with the help of his college theatre professor, De Palma shot his first movie The Wedding Party, which was also an early role for Robert De Niro.However the film would not be released until 1969 after De Palma had made a name for himself within the Greenwich Village filmmaking scene in New York.De Palma forged a partnership with the young De Niro casting him in Greetings, which made it into a lost of top fifty worst movies ever made in 2004, and Hi Mom!
After several small independent movies that got a lukewarm response at best De Palma broke into Hollywood with the release of horror movie Carrie in 1976.
Carrie White (Sissy Spacek), who after being subjected to both physical and mental harassment by her peers, her mother and her teachers, discovers she harbours telekinetic powers
High school girls played by Amy Irving (in her film debut), P.J. Soles, and Nancy Allen plot to avenge themselves on the ostracized fellow student after they get in trouble for pelting her with tampons during a gym class..
When they get popular boy Tommy Ross (William Katz) to be her date for the prom, the stage is set for some heart-rending cruelty and fiery retribution.
Carrie was met with great critical and commercial success grossing $33 million, $100 million in modern day dollars. Carrie is also one of the few horror movies that received multiple Academy Award nominations.
De Palma followed this up with another horror movie The Fury. Unfortunately it didn't enjoy the same response with many claiming that the director was going over old ground.
Blow Out followed in 1981 starring John Travolta and Nancy Allen.
While outdoors recording sound effects for a movie, audio technician Jack Terri hears a tire blowout and a car crash.
Before the car sinks into the river, he manages to save the female passenger from drowning. Because the other passenger was a presidential candidate, Jack suspects that the "accident" was a political murder.
Afterwards, Jack falls in love with Sally, the woman he rescued, and learns that she's been in cahoots with Manny, a sleazy photographer who's operating a blackmail scheme.
As part of their scam, Manny photographs Sally with important men in what appear to be compromising situations. Jack starts to wonder whether he's being paranoid or whether things are not quite what they seem.
Then the assassin turns his attention to Jack and Sally, and Jack has to use every special effects trick in the book to keep them both alive.
At the time the film received mixed reviews from the critics but over the years the film's response has become more favourable and is now considered one of the director's best pictures.
1983 was to be the year for De Palma as he released gangster classic Scarface, written by Oliver Stone and starring Al Pacino.
Al Pacino stars as Tony Montana, whose intelligence, guts, and ambition help him skyrocket from dishwasher to the top of a criminal empire but whose eventual paranoia and incestuous desire for his kid sister (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) prove his undoing.
When released the film drew controversy due to it's extremely violent nature. Despite this the film grossed $65 million and, over the years, gained a huge following.
De Palma went on to have a string of hits including The Untouchables, which re-united him with De Niro, Casualties of War and a second movie with Pacino Carlito's Way.
In 1996 De Palma turned to the Hollywood blockbuster when he directed the first of the Mission Impossible movies starring Tom Cruise.
It was the biggest grossing movie of the year taking over $456 million at the global box office.
Since 1996 however De Palma has been on a bit of a decline working on movies that have failed to deliver at he box office.
His most recent picture The Black Dahlia took the director into the film noir genre of the industry. But despite a great cast of Josh Hartnett, Scarlett Johansson, Hilary Swank and Aaron Eckhart the film was not a success.
The director's current project Redacted is different yet again as he tackles political issues in Iraq.
The film is based on the Mahmudiyah killings, and the rape, murder and burning of a fourteen year old girl in 2006 allegedly by US soldiers.
Redacted aims to highlight real military life and the harrowing circumstances win which the soldiers find themselves.
But movies that have tackled the war on terror have not done well at the box office. In 2007, despite good casts, Lions for Lambs and Rendition under performed as cinema broke with tradition and released war movies while the war was still taking place.
Redacted is released 14th March
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw
View the Brian De Palma movies gallery.