He is a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and two-time Oscar nominee, and has been a force in American theater since 1976, when his first staged plays immediately won Obie and New York Drama Critics Circle Awards.

His critically acclaimed debut feature, "House of Games", was selected to close the New York Film Festival in 1987. He followed this with his gentle Mafia fable "Things Change", co-written with Shel Silverstein, for which Joe Montegna and Don Ameche shared Best Actor honors at the 1988 Venice Film Festival; Homicide, which opened the 1991 Cannes Film Festival; "Oleanna" in 1994, the sole film he has adapted and directed from one of his plays; "The Spanish Prisoner", his acclaimed Hitchcockian thriller, which became one of the most popular independent films of 1998; "The Winslow Boy", an adaptation of the famed Terrence Rattigan play starring Nigel Hawthorne, Jeremy Northam and Rebecca Pidgeon; and most recently, State and Main, starring William H. Macy, Alec Baldwin, Sarah Jessica Parker, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Rebecca Pidgeon.

Mamet has also won acclaim for numerous screenplays, including "The Verdict" for Sidney Lumet and "Wag the Dog" for Barry Levinson, which were both nominated for Academy Awards for Best Screenplay. His other screenplays include The Postman Always Rings Twice for Bob Rafelson; "The Untouchables" for Brian DePalma; "Were No Angels", with Robert DeNiro and Sean Penn for Neil Jordan; "Hoffa", directed by Danny DeVito and starring Jack Nicholson in the title role; and "The Edge", with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin.

The writer first won recognition with his plays, Sexual Perversity in Chicago and American Buffalo (later filmed with Dustin Hoffman and Dennis Franz). When both plays opened in New York in 1976, Mamet won the Obie Award for distinguished play writing and American Buffalo was voted Best Play by the New York Drama Critics Circle. In 1978, he received the Outer Critics Circle Award for his contribution to American theater.