Leifer has done special photography on many feature films, including The Longest Yard, Staying Alive, F.I.S.T., Semi-Tough, One From The Heart, Rocky II, Rocky III, Chariots of Fire, The Hunt For Red October, White Men Can’t Jump, Rising Sun, Quiz Show. He also played a psychoanalyst in a cameo (speaking) role in Quiz Show.
Neil has published sixteen books – his best-selling 1978 Abrams coffee table book, Sports, a collection of sports photographs. In 1985, Doubleday published Neil Leifer’s Sports Stars. 1992 saw the publication of three new coffee table books: Muhammad Ali – Memories, published by Rizzoli; Safari, a collection of African animal pictures published by Reader’s Digest; and a new collection of sports pictures, Sports, published by Collins. In September 2001, The Best of Leifer was published by Abbeville Press. The book is a retrospective of Neil’s 40 years as a photojournalist and showcases the best of his sports and non-sports photographs.
Neil’s eleventh book, Neil Leifer: Portraits with an Introduction by Tom Brokaw, was published by St. Ann’s Press in November 2003. One of only two principal photographers in the TASCHEN $3,000, 75 pound/800-page book on Muhammad Ali’s life entitled GOAT. In September 2006, Abbeville Press published A Year in Sports, a 348-page coffee table book with an Introduction by Frank Deford. In November 2007, TASCHEN published Neil Leifer, Ballet in the Dirt: The Golden Age of Baseball, with an Introduction by Ron Shelton. The book is a collection of Neil’s baseball photographs of the 1960s and ’70s, the “Golden Age of Baseball”. In November 2008, TASCHEN published Guts and Glory: The Golden Age of American Football 1958-1978, with an Introduction by the late Los Angeles Times Sports columnist Jim Murray. The book is a collection of Neil’s football photographs of the late 1950s, 60s and 70s.