His role as Frank Slade in Scent of a Woman won him the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1992 after receiving seven previous Oscar nominations. He made his feature film debut in the 1969 film Me, Natalie in a minor supporting role, before playing the leading role in the 1971 drama The Panic in Needle Park. He is a method actor, taught mainly by Lee Strasberg and Charles Laughton at the Actors Studio in New York. His mother disagreed with his decision; they had an argument and he left home. His two closest friends died young of drug abuse at the ages of 19 and 30. It really did.
