10 Movie Directors Who Cast Actors As Cinematic Versions Of Themselves

Brian De Palma began his filmmaking career being written off as a Hitchcock-wannabe who had a good eye, but soon developed one of the most respected, idiosyncratic careers in Hollywood (Mission to Mars notwithstanding).

All filmmakers explore their passions within reason, but De Palma takes it a step further than Hitchcock - perhaps due to more productive freedom or perhaps just because he was more interested in pleasing himself than the audience.

But Brian De Palma's work is intentionally perverse, at times confronting audiences with questions about why we're enjoying it at all. Watching a De Palma film can be akin to watching a snuff film with some excellent production value and split-screen technology.

He's a voyeur, and he's saying, "Who isn't?"

The most telling De Palma avatar is Keith Gordon's young nerdy teen in Dressed to Kill (who would become a director himself later in life). Like De Palma, Gordon spies on his subjects from a distance, intrigued but always at a distance.

Later in his career, it was De Palma himself voicing the director of a softcore porn film in The Black Dahlia, urging the ill-fated Mia Kirshner to play up her 'assets'.