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
