D'entre a suya filmografía como director, se puet destacar bellas cintas como The Silence of the Lambs (1991, con Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins, Scott Glenn, Ted Levine y Anthony Heald), Philadelphia (1993, con Tom Hanks, Denzel Washington, Jason Robards, Mary Steenburgen y Antonio Banderas), Beloved (1998, con Oprah Winfrey, Danny Glover, Thandie Newton y Kimberly Elise), The Manchurian Candidate (2004, con Denzel Washington, Meryl Streep, Liev Schreiber, Jon Voight, Jeffrey Wright, Bruno Ganz y Ted Levine), u Rachel Getting Married (2008, con Anne Hathaway, Rosemarie DeWitt, Bill Irwin, Anna Deavere Smith, Tunde Adebimpe y Debra Winger).