MARITAL STATUS
Professions Actor , Director , Executive producer
Birth name Alan Wolf Arkin
Nationality American
Birth March 26, 1934 (New York – New York – United States)
Death June 29, 2023
BIOGRAPHY
Alan Arkin grew up in a Brooklyn neighborhood in New York, in a family of Jewish intellectuals and artists, immigrants from Russia and Germany. A child of the ball, showing a passion for music and theater from an early age, he nevertheless abandoned his higher studies to form his music group, ” The Tarriers” . He even wrote a song in 1956, “The Banana Boat Song” , which would be triumphantly covered by a certain Harry Belafonte shortly after. Living on expedients and odd jobs, he tries as best he can to land a small role on television or in the theater on the job. Luck smiled on him in 1957, where he landed the small role of a singer in the musical film Calypso Heat Wave .
His career took off on stage in the early 1960s, when he joined Chicago’s famous improvisation troupe, the Second City Theater . His first role on Broadway, the title character in Carl Reiner ‘s play , “Enter Laughing” , earned him the Tony Award for Best Actor. In 1966, he achieved great success in the satirical comedy The Russians are Coming , directed by Norman Jewison , for which he was nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor and won the Golden Globe . The following year, he starred opposite a blind Audrey Hepburn in Alone in the Dark , where he played a terrifying psychopath. Irony: in 1968 he played a deaf-mute in The Heart is a Solitary Hunter ; a role for which he obtained his second Oscar nomination. In 1970, he delivered a hilarious performance with the role of Bomber Captain Yossarian, in the anti-war pamphlet Catch 22 ( Mike Nichols ), before signing his first production with Little Murders . After a few years on television, in 1976 he played a surprising Dr. Freud in the very successful Sherlock Holmes Attacks the Orient Express .
The 80s and 90s marked a mixed career for him, punctuated by sometimes questionable artistic choices and clear successes. At the beginning of the 90s, he toured under the direction of Sydney Pollack in Havana , before being summoned by Tim Burton for the needs of Edward Scissorhands . In 1992, he was part of the impressive cast that made up Glengarry Glen Ross , alongside Al Pacino ,Jack Lemmon . After a detour through SF ( Welcome to Gattaca ) and the TV series Tribunal Central directed by Sidney Lumet , in 2006 he played a sexually obsessed (but touching) grandfather in the noted Little Miss Sunshine .
Very active, the actor shares the posters for the thrillers Firewall (2006) and Secret Detention (2008). Alan Arkin then collaborated again with Steve Carell in the comedy Max the Menace , inspired by the television series of the same name, before starring in Marley & Me alongside the couple Owen Wilson / Jennifer Aniston . A quality supporting role, he played Robin Wright ‘s husband in The Private Lives of Pippa Lee then returned to the Muppets Show gang, after participating in an episode in 1980, in the film The Muppets Returns . The actor also takes part in a cleverly set up scam ( Thin Ice ) and plays Ryan Reynolds ‘ father in the comedy Standard Exchange .
In 2012, Alan Arkin took part in the award-winning Argo . For the occasion, he plays Lester Siegel, a strange producer tasked with John Goodman with covering for Ben Affleck : his performance was nominated for an Oscar in the Best Supporting Actor category. The always-in-form actor also plays opposite Al Pacino and Christopher Walken in The Last Freed before playing Sylvester Stallone ‘s trainer in the boxing comedy Rematch and rubbing shoulders with Mad Men star Jon Hamm in Million Dollar Arm (another film with a sports theme). In 2019, he reunited with Tim Burton for Dumbo , and starred opposite Michael Douglas for two seasons of the Netflix series The Kominsky Method .
