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He started his Hollywood career as an assistant in the cartoon department at Warner Brothers . In 1957 , he undertook his first production role for Paramount Pictures . In 1962 , he produced To Kill A Mockingbird , for which he received a Best Picture nomination in the 1963 Academy Awards . In 1969 , he directed his first feature, The Sterile Cuckoo , starring Liza Minnelli .
In 1971 , Pakula released the first installment of what would informally come to be known as his " paranoia trilogy". Klute , the story of a private eye's relationship with a call girl (played by Jane Fonda , who won an Oscar for her performance), was a commercial and critical success. This was followed in 1974 by The Parallax View starring Warren Beatty , a similarly labyrinthine post- Watergate thriller notable for its experimental use of hypnotic imagery in a celebrated film-within-a-film sequence in which the protagonist is inducted into the mysterious Parallax Corporation. Finally, in 1976 , Pakula rounded out the "trilogy" with All The President's Men , another commercial hit considered by many critics and fans to be one of the best thrillers of the 1970s . The film was based on the bestselling account of the Watergate scandal written by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein .
Pakula scored another hit in 1982 with Sophie's Choice , starring Meryl Streep . His screenplay, based on the novel by William Styron , was nominated for an Academy Award. In later years, he largely focused on courtroom drama s, achieving commercial success with Presumed Innocent , based on the bestselling novel by Scott Turow , and The Pelican Brief , an adaptation of the John Grisham bestseller.
Pakula died in 1998 in a bizarre car accident at the age of 70. A driver in front of him struck a metal pipe which went through Pakula's windshield, causing him to die instantly.