Legendary director Sidney Lumet has more than 50 films to his name, including Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, and Network. He passed away in 2011.

The son of an actor and a dancer, Lumet started out on stage at the age of four, appearing in a Yiddish Art Theater. Lumet turned to directing after his discharge from WWII, getting a job as an assistant director at CBS and making his TV directorial debut in 1950. After he directed more than 100 TV episodes and an off-Broadway play, in 1957 Lumet made the leap to film with the courtroom drama classic 12 Angry Men. It turned out to be a homerun: Both a critical and commercial success, the movie earned three Oscar nominations, including Best Picture.

Lumet directed a string of successful films in the 1960s, but it was during the 1970s that he really established himself as one of the most commercially-successful directors of the era: Known for his strict rehearsal process and garnering compelling performances from his actors, Lumet directed Murder on the Orient Express in 1974 starring Lauren Bacall and Albert Finney, Serpico and Dog Day Afternoon, both starring Al Pacino, and 1976's Network with Faye Dunaway and Robert Duvall. While Lumet would likely want the 80s-early 00s struck from his record (he's responsible for The Wiz), Lumet capped off his career with Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, starring Ethan Hawke, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Marisa Tomei. Roger Ebert described it as one of his "greatest achievements."

Lumet married his fourth wife, Mary Gimbel Lumet, in 1980. His ex-wives include Gloria Vanderbilt (the mother of Anderson Cooper), and Gail Jones, the daughter of musical legend Lena Horne. In 2011, Lumet passed away from lymphoma. [Image via Getty]