He enjoyed commercial success with Dressed to Kill (1980), The Untouchables (1987) and Mission: Impossible (1996) and made cult classics such as Sisters (1972), Phantom of the Paradise (1974) and The Fury (1978).

He had a poor relationship with his father, and would secretly follow him to record his adulterous behavior; this would eventually inspire the teenage character in De Palma's Dressed to Kill (1980).

Enrolled at Columbia University as a physics student,[10] De Palma became enraptured with filmmaking after seeing Orson Welles's Citizen Kane (1941) and Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958).

After receiving his undergraduate degree in 1962, De Palma enrolled at the newly coed Sarah Lawrence College as a graduate student in their theater department,[11] earning an M.A.

Once there, influences as various as drama teacher Wilford Leach, the Maysles brothers, Michelangelo Antonioni, Andy Warhol and Jean-Luc Godard, impressed upon De Palma the many styles and themes that would shape his work in the coming decades.

The film, co-directed with Wilford Leach and producer Cynthia Munroe, had been shot in 1963 but remained unreleased until 1969,[13] when De Palma's star had risen sufficiently in the Greenwich Village filmmaking scene.

[20] In 1970, De Palma left New York for Hollywood at age thirty to make Get to Know Your Rabbit (1972), starring Orson Welles and Tommy Smothers.

[22] Though some see the psychic thriller as De Palma's bid for a blockbuster, the project was in fact small, underfunded by United Artists, and well under the cultural radar during the early months of production, as King's novel had yet to climb the bestseller list.

The cast was mostly young and relatively new, though Sissy Spacek and John Travolta had gained attention for previous work in, respectively, film and sitcoms.

Carrie became De Palma's first genuine box-office success,[23] garnering Spacek and Piper Laurie Oscar nominations for their performances.

[25] Its suspense sequences are buttressed by teen comedy tropes, and its use of split-screen, split-diopter and slow motion shots tell the story visually rather than through dialogue.

Alfred Bester's novel The Demolished Man had fascinated De Palma since the late 1950s and appealed to his background in mathematics and avant-garde storytelling.

Its unconventional unfolding of plot (exemplified in its mathematical layout of dialogue) and its stress on perception have analogs in De Palma's filmmaking.

The result of his experience with adapting The Demolished Man was the 1978 science fiction psychic thriller The Fury, starring Kirk Douglas, Carrie Snodgress, John Cassavetes and Amy Irving.

[30] The film was admired by Jean-Luc Godard, who featured a clip in his mammoth Histoire(s) du cinéma, and Pauline Kael, who championed both The Fury and De Palma.

[31] The film boasted a larger budget than Carrie, though the consensus view at the time was that De Palma was repeating himself, with diminishing returns.

[32] The 1980s were marked by some of De Palma's best known films, including the erotic thriller Dressed to Kill (1980) starring Michael Caine and Angie Dickinson.

"[35] De Palma directed Scarface (1983), a remake of Howard Hawks's 1932 film, starring Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer with a screenplay by Oliver Stone.

Loosely based on the 2006 Mahmudiyah killings by American soldiers in Iraq, the film echoes themes that appeared in Casualties of War.

[44][45][46] De Palma's output has slowed since the release of Redacted, with subsequent projects often falling into development hell, due mostly to creative differences.

It received generally negative reviews and was released direct-to-VOD in the United States, grossing less than half a million dollars internationally.

[53] Despite rumors of his supposed retirement after having two projects, Sweet Vengeance and Catch and Kill, fall through,[54] De Palma revealed to Vulture in September 2024 that he had "one other" undisclosed film he was planning to make, and that he was in the process of trying to cast it.

The Untouchables' finale shoot out in the train station is a clear borrowing from the Odessa Steps sequence in Sergei Eisenstein's The Battleship Potemkin.

Dressed to Kill was a note-for-note homage to Hitchcock's Psycho, including such moments as the surprise death of the lead actress and the exposition scene by the psychiatrist at the end.

[1] De Palma has been married and divorced three times, to actress Nancy Allen (1979–1983), producer Gale Anne Hurd (1991–1993), and Darnell Gregorio (1995–1997).

[60] De Palma has encouraged and fostered the filmmaking careers of directors such as Mark Romanek and Keith Gordon, the latter of whom collaborated with him twice as an actor, both in 1979's Home Movies and 1980's Dressed to Kill.

[61] Filmmakers influenced by De Palma include Terrence Malick,[62] Quentin Tarantino,[63] Ronny Yu,[64] Don Mancini,[65] Nacho Vigalondo,[66] and Jack Thomas Smith.

Consider also these titles: Sisters, Blow Out, The Fury, Dressed to Kill, Carrie, Scarface, Wise Guys, Casualties of War, Carlito's Way, Mission: Impossible.

Yes, there are a few failures along the way (Snake Eyes, Mission to Mars, The Bonfire of the Vanities), but look at the range here, and reflect that these movies contain treasure for those who admire the craft as well as the story, who sense the glee with which De Palma manipulates images and characters for the simple joy of being good at it.

[72] In her book The Erotic Thriller in Contemporary Cinema, Linda Ruth Williams writes that "De Palma understood the cinematic potency of dangerous fucking, perhaps earlier than his feminist detractors".