After producing some TV music specials, Hackford shifted to drama as the producer-writer-director of an earnest Oscar-winning short entitled "Teenage Father" (1978). Hackford branched out in feature directing with "The Idolmaker" (1980), a slick, cynical and energetic look at the late 50s pop music industry starring Ray Sharkey. As a successful producer-director, he displayed an interest in dance as well as conventional Cold War romance and intrigue with "White Nights" (1985) starring Mikhail Baryshnikov, Gregory Hines and Isabella Rossellini. Hackford combined his concerns about pop and Latino culture as a producer of the popular Ritchie Valens biopic, "La Bamba" (1987), which opened doors for Hispanic Hollywood. In a similar vein, he personally helmed "Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll!" (1987) a documentary-cum-performance film commemorating rock pioneer Chuck Berry's 60th birthday. Hackford returned to fiction with "Everybody's All-American" (1988), a sentimental romantic drama starring Dennis Quaid and Jessica Lange set in the world of college football. The film received a mixed reception but Lange's performance was singled out for praise. Hackford's most ambitious and heartfelt project was "Bound By Honor" (1993), a gritty three-hour drama about three cousins in early 70s East Los Angeles, one of whom gets involved with the Chicano Mafia. Often brutally realistic, the bilingual film was shot on location and featured extensive sequences in San Quentin prison with actual inmates in the cast. Though reviewers respected the filmmaker's noble intent, the result was deemed a wildly uneven and unpleasant bore. It remains the producer-director's personal favorite of his films.

Hackford subsequently helmed and oversaw the classy Stephen King adaptation "Dolores Claiborne" (1995). Boasting powerhouse performances from Kathy Bates, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Judy Parfitt, high production values and florid stylistics, the film was evocative of 1950s Hollywood melodramas. Hackford's follow-up was the hard-to-take-seriously courtroom thriller with supernatural overtones, "The Devil's Advocate" (1997), with Keanu Reeves as a hotshot Florida lawyer with a knack for jury selection who get hired by the demonic owner of a NYC law firm (Al Pacino). Next came the hostage drama "Proof of Life" (2000), a competently assembled thriller overshadowed by the scandalous, highly publicized off-screen love affair between stars Russell Crowe and Meg Ryan, wha was still married to Dennis Quaid at the time. After a long hiatus, Hackford rebounded spectacularly with the Ray Charles biopic "Ray" (2004), a story that suited the typical biopic framework but was made all the more explosive by Charles' larger-than-life story, his outstanding music and a tour-de-force performance by Jamie Foxx. After being ignored by the Golden Globes for directing "Ray", Hackford was honored with an Academy Award nomination for Best Director, the first of his career. The biopic also received four other Oscar nods, including Best Picture, Sound Mixing and Editing.