Quantcast
Alan Arkin: American actor, director, musician and singer (1934-) | Biography
peoplepill id: alan-arkin
AA
2 views today
2 views this week
Alan Arkin
American actor, director, musician and singer

Alan Arkin

Alan Arkin
The basics

Quick Facts

Intro American actor, director, musician and singer
A.K.A. Alan Wolf Arkin, Arkin, Alan
Is Film director Musician Writer Actor Television director Screenwriter Singer Stage actor Film actor Television actor Theatre director Theater professional Children's writer Film producer Science fiction writer
From United States of America
Field Arts Film, TV, Stage & Radio Literature Music
Gender male
Birth 26 March 1934, New York City, USA
Age 89 years
Star sign Aries
Residence New Mexico, USA; Brooklyn, USA; Los Angeles, USA
Family
Father: David I. Arkin
Children: Adam ArkinMatthew Arkin
Stats
Height: 1.778 m
Instruments:
Voice
Alan Arkin
The details (from wikipedia)

Biography

Alan Wolf Arkin (born March 26, 1934) is an American actor, director and screenwriter. With a film career spanning eight decades, Arkin is known for his performances in The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming (1966), Wait Until Dark (1967), The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1968), Popi (1969), Catch-22 (1970), The In-Laws (1979), Edward Scissorhands (1990), The Rocketeer (1991), Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), Thirteen Conversations About One Thing (2001), Little Miss Sunshine (2006), Get Smart (2008), Sunshine Cleaning (2008) and Argo (2012).

He has been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor twice, for his performances in The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming and The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. He won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Little Miss Sunshine and received a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his performance in Argo.

Early life

Arkin was born in Brooklyn, New York City, on March 26, 1934, the son of David I. Arkin, a painter and writer, and his wife, Beatrice (née Wortis), a teacher. He was raised in a Jewish family with "no emphasis on religion". His grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Ukraine, Russia, and Germany. His parents moved to Los Angeles when Alan was 11, but an 8-month Hollywood strike cost his father his job as a set designer. During the 1950s Red Scare, Arkin's parents were accused of being Communists, and his father was fired when he refused to answer questions about his political ideology. David Arkin challenged the dismissal, but he was vindicated only after his death.

Career

Early work

Arkin in Popi (1969)

Arkin, who had been taking acting lessons since age 10, became a scholarship student at various drama academies, including one run by the Stanislavsky student Benjamin Zemach, who taught Arkin a psychological approach to acting. Arkin attended Los Angeles City College from 1951 to 1953. He also attended Bennington College. With two friends, he formed the folk music group The Tarriers, in which Arkin sang and played guitar. The band members co-composed the group's 1956 hit "The Banana Boat Song", a reworking, with some new lyrics, of a traditional, Jamaican calypso folk song of the same name, combined with another titled "Hill and Gully Rider". It reached #4 on the Billboard magazine chart the same year as Harry Belafonte's better-known hit version. The group appeared in the 1957 Calypso-exploitation film Calypso Heat Wave, singing "Banana Boat Song" and "Choucoune".

From 1958 to 1968, Arkin performed and recorded with the children's folk group, The Baby Sitters. He also performed the role of Dr. Pangloss in a concert staging of Leonard Bernstein's operetta Candide, alongside Madeline Kahn's Cunegonde. Arkin was an early member of the Second City comedy troupe in the 1960s.

Acting

With Shirley Knight in the TV special The Defection of Simas Kudirka (1978)

Arkin is one of only six actors to receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor for his first screen appearance (for The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming in 1966). Two years later, he was again nominated, for The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter.

In 1968, he appeared in the title role of Inspector Clouseau after Peter Sellers dissociated himself from the role, but the film was not well received by Sellers' fans. Arkin and his second wife Barbara Dana appeared together on the 1970–1971 season of Sesame Street as a comical couple named Larry and Phyllis who resolve their conflicts when they remember how to pronounce the word "cooperate."

Arkin and Dana later appeared together again in 1987 on the ABC sitcom Harry, which was canceled after four low-rated episodes.

His best known films include Wait Until Dark as the erudite killer stalking Audrey Hepburn; The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming as the leader of the landing party from the stranded Soviet submarine, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, Catch-22, as Yossarian, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, Little Murders, The In-Laws, Glengarry Glen Ross, and Little Miss Sunshine, for which he won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar; and Argo. His portrayal of Dr. Oatman, a scared and emotionally conflicted psychiatrist treating John Cusack's hit man character Martin Q. Blank in Grosse Point Blank was also well received.

His role in Little Miss Sunshine, as Grandfather Edwin, who was foul-mouthed and had a taste for snorting heroin, won him the BAFTA Film Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role and the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. On receiving his Academy Award on February 25, 2007, Arkin said, "More than anything, I'm deeply moved by the open-hearted appreciation our small film has received, which in these fragmented times speaks so openly of the possibility of innocence, growth, and connection". At 72 years old, Arkin was the sixth oldest winner of the Best Supporting Actor Oscar.

In 2006–2007, Arkin was cast in supporting roles in Rendition as a U.S. senator and The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause as Bud Newman (Carol's Father).

On Broadway, Arkin starred in Enter Laughing (for which he won a Tony Award) and Luv. He also directed The Sunshine Boys, among others.

Directing

In 1969, Arkin's directorial debut was the Oscar-nominated 12-minute children's film titled People Soup, starring his sons Adam and Matthew Arkin. Based on a story of the same name he published in Galaxy Science Fiction in 1958, People Soup is a fantasy about two boys who experiment with various kitchen ingredients until they concoct a magical soup which transforms them into different animals and objects.

Arkin in 1975

His most acclaimed directorial effort is Little Murders, released in 1971. Written by cartoonist Jules Feiffer, it is a black comedy film starring Elliott Gould and Marcia Rodd about a girl, Patsy (Rodd), who brings home her boyfriend, Alfred (Gould), to meet her severely dysfunctional family amidst a series of random shootings, garbage strikes and electrical outages ravaging the neighborhood. The film opened to a lukewarm review by Roger Greenspan, and a more positive one by Vincent Canby in the New York Times. Roger Ebert's review in the Chicago Sun Times was more enthusiastic, saying, "One of the reasons it works and is indeed a definitive reflection of America's darker moods, is that it breaks audiences down into isolated individuals, vulnerable and uncertain."

Arkin also directed Fire Sale (1977), Samuel Beckett Is Coming Soon (1993) and Arigo (2000).

Writing

Arkin is the author of many books, including Tony's Hard Work Day (illustrated by James Stevenson, 1972), The Lemming Condition (illustrated by Joan Sandin, 1976), Halfway Through the Door: An Actor's Journey Toward Self (1979), and The Clearing (1986 continuation of Lemming). He has released two memoirs, An Improvised Life (2011) and Out of My Mind (2018).

Singing

In 1985, he sang two selections by Jones & Schmidt on Ben Bagley's album Contemporary Broadway Revisited.

Accolades

In 2014, Arkin received the Gregory Peck Award for Cinematic Excellence to honor his life's work at the San Diego Film Festival.

Personal life

Arkin has been married three times, with two ending in divorce. He and Jeremy Yaffe (m. 1955–1961) have two sons: Adam Arkin, born August 19, 1956, and Matthew Arkin, born March 21, 1960. He was married to actress-screenwriter Barbara Dana from 1964 to 1994: she appeared with him in segments of the TV Show Sesame Street in the 1970s. They lived in Chappaqua, New York. In 1967, they had son Anthony (Tony) Dana Arkin. In 1996, Arkin married psychotherapist Suzanne Newlander, whose surname he adopted for his character Norman Newlander in The Kominsky Method. They live in Carlsbad, California.

The contents of this page are sourced from Wikipedia article on 12 Mar 2020. The contents are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license.
Sponsored
Search trend
comments so far.
Comments
From our partners
Sponsored
Reference sources
References
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OE_S7P0egzk
http://www.filmreference.com/film/17/Alan-Arkin.html
https://www.interfaithfamily.com/arts_and_entertainment/popular_culture/interfaith_celebrities_85th_annual_academy_awards/
http://jewishjournal.com/culture/arts/14415/
https://web.archive.org/web/20070223023918/http://www.jewishjournal.com/home/preview.php?id=17205
http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2004/Jan/27/il/il01a.html
http://www.nj.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2012/10/argo_alan_arkin_ben_affleck_fi.html
http://people.com/archive/stardom-was-a-catch-22-for-alan-arkin-but-his-wife-and-a-guru-helped-beat-the-system-vol-11-no-12/
https://movies.yahoo.com/movie/contributor/1800021870/bio
https://web.archive.org/web/20061216231219/http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/contributor/1800021870/bio
http://www.bennington.edu/bennington-network/outsized-impact/alan-arkin
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-tarriers-mn0000918960/biography
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050222/fullcredits?ref_=tt_cl_sm#cast
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050222/soundtrack?ref_=ttfc_ql_trv_7
http://www.hollywood.com/celebs/fulldetail/id/186232
http://www.avclub.com/articles/alan-arkin,14005/
https://web.archive.org/web/20090209210750/http://www.avclub.com/articles/alan-arkin,14005/
http://www.filmsite.org/bestactor.html
http://www.tcm.com/this-month/article/64129%7C0/The-Russians-Are-Coming-The-Russians-Are-Coming.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Iik6x87zmM
http://newsmax.com/archives/articles/2007/2/25/230344.shtml
https://archive.is/20120723011620/http://newsmax.com/archives/articles/2007/2/25/230344.shtml
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue17-X-sGgE
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064799/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lx5CTk5gLDE
https://archive.org/details/galaxymagazine-1958-11
https://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?_r=1&res=9C0CE3D81F30E73BBC4852DFB466838A669EDE
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19710101/REVIEWS/101010318/1023
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43169404-out-of-my-mind
http://www.notablebiographies.com/newsmakers2/2007-A-Co/Arkin-Alan.html
https://www.gettyimages.fi/detail/news-photo/actor-alan-arkin-accepts-the-gregory-peck-lifetime-news-photo/456296052
http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20073217,00.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RumLmuM3KcE
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000273/
https://www.allmovie.com/artist/p79913
https://www.ibdb.com/broadway-cast-staff/14056
http://www.lortel.org/Archives/CreditableEntity/601
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/46255
http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1572210,00.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20020123022417/http://folkera.com/Tarriers/press.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20071202072434/http://www.worldmind.com/Cannon/Culture/Interviews/arkin.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCM3dj8HXCw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_nGW7pWBDY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNeKYXrwJgI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyq3_gCCgsc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTzkyM5nFlI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgoBvtjqRv0
https://authority.bibsys.no/authority/rest/authorities/html/98043437
http://catalogo.bne.es/uhtbin/authoritybrowse.cgi?action=display&authority_id=XX1117527
https://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb13929928k
https://data.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb13929928k
http://cantic.bnc.cat/registres/CUCId/a11801840
https://ci.nii.ac.jp/author/DA02993874?l=en
https://d-nb.info/gnd/124137962
http://isni.org/isni/0000000115765696
https://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n79058291
https://musicbrainz.org/artist/8f74b9d5-f0f2-4e4d-857d-a0c4c9bf7b56
https://id.ndl.go.jp/auth/ndlna/00462449
https://aleph.nkp.cz/F/?func=find-c&local_base=aut&ccl_term=ica=ola2002146945&CON_LNG=ENG
https://nla.gov.au/anbd.aut-an35008080
http://uli.nli.org.il/F/?func=direct&doc_number=000419904&local_base=nlx10
https://nl.go.kr/authorities/resource/KAC201858495
http://katalog.nsk.hr/F/?func=direct&doc_number=000166029&local_base=nsk10
http://data.bibliotheken.nl/id/thes/p070823855
http://data.rero.ch/02-A006192773
https://snaccooperative.org/ark:/99166/w6v70f0c
https://www.idref.fr/028322487
https://trove.nla.gov.au/people/787832
https://viaf.org/viaf/84959984
https://www.worldcat.org/identities/containsVIAFID/84959984
Sections Alan Arkin

arrow-left arrow-right instagram whatsapp myspace quora soundcloud spotify tumblr vk website youtube pandora tunein iheart itunes