Alan Arkin Scroll down for movie list. Biography from Leonard Maltin's Movie Encyclopedia:
Actor. (b. Mar. 26, 1934, New York City.) Talented actor whose distinctive style of wry, deadpan dialogue delivery and mastery of dialect has made his diverse screen performances a delight, beginning with an Oscar-nominated turn in The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming (1966), in which he played an abandoned Russian sailor. Again nominated for an Academy Award as the deafmute in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1968), Arkin has successfully alternated dramatic and comedic roles. He briefly supplanted Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau (1968), played a 1930s movie director in Hearts of the West (1975), interpreted Freud in The Seven Percent So- lution (1976), donned superhero togs in The Return of Captain Invincible (1982), and, more recently, played a gentle but bored suburbanite in Edward Scissorhands (1990) and an eccentric mechanic in The Rocketeer (1991). He is frequently better than his material, as proved by his superior comic turns in The In-Laws (1979), Improper Channels (1979), and Simon (1980), to name a few. Arkin took stabs at directing in 1971, adapting Jules Feiffer's play Little Murders to the screen, and in 1977, helming the truly wretched Fire Sale More recently, he held his own in the all-star Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) and gave a warm-hearted performance as the aging camp director in the nostalgic Indian Summer (1993). He also contributed an amusing cameo (without billing) as a mild-mannered police chief in 1993's So I Married an Axe Murderer His son Adam Arkin has become a familiar face in films and especially on television, as a regular cast member of several series including "Northern Exposure," 1993's "Big Wave Dave's," in which he had the starring role, and "Chicago Hope" (1994- ). |  |