|
Alan Alda
Scroll down for movie list.
Biography from Leonard Maltin's Movie Encyclopedia:
Good-natured leading man who in the late 1970s was everyone's ideal of the "sensitive male." The son of actor Robert Alda, his early work was primarily on stage, with occasional forays into TV, notably as a semiregular on "That Was the Week That Was" (1964-65). His first noteworthy film role was as author George Plimpton in Pa per Lion (1968), and he was a surprisingly credible hillbilly in 1970's The Moonshine War Then in 1972, he was cast as Hawkeye in the TV series version of "M*A*S*H," and though it was almost canceled that first season, it went on for 11 years, and won Alda four Emmys in the process: two for acting, one each for writing and directing. His total involvement in the show left little time for outside work, but he was effective as Caryl Chessman in the TV movie Kill Me If You Can and in 1978 appeared in two films based on hit Broadway comedies, California Suite and Same Time, Next Year
In 1979, Alda wrote and starred (opposite a young Meryl Streep) in a political drama, The Seduction of Joe Tynan and two years later donned the director's cap as well with The Four Seasons a bittersweet romantic comedy that spun off a brief TV series. His later films, which continued his often-glib exploration of human nature, were Sweet Liberty (1986), a Hollywood satire; A New Life (1988), about middle-age divorcˇes, and Betsy's Wedding (1990), a genial cousin to Father of the Bride Cast against type, he was deliciously sleazy as an egotistical filmmaker in Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989). Allen used him again to good effect in Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993), and, perhaps taking a cue from Woody's casting idea, he was hired to play an egocentric doctor in the AIDS telefeature And the Band Played On (1993). Alda has also been active on stage in recent years, in London and on Broadway, in a revival of "Our Town" and in Neil Simon's "Jake's Women." |  |
