 | ||||||
| ||||||
Woody Allen
Allan Stewart Konigsberg
1 December 1935, Brooklyn, New York
Woody Allen (born Allen Stewart Konigsberg; December 1, 1935) is an American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, jazz musician, author, and playwright.
Allen's distinctive films, which run the gamut from dramas to screwball sex comedies, have made him a notable American director. He is also distinguished by his rapid rate of production and his very large body of work. Allen writes and directs his movies and has also acted in the majority of them. For inspiration, Allen draws heavily on literature, sexuality, philosophy, psychology, Jewish identity, and the history of cinema, among a wealth of other fields of interest.
Allen developed a passion for music early on and is a celebrated jazz clarinetist. What began as a teenage avocation has led to regular public performances at various small venues in his hometown of Manhattan, with occasional appearances at various jazz festivals. Allen joined the Preservation Hall Jazz Band and the New Orleans Funeral Ragtime Orchestra in performances that provided the film score for his 1973 comedy Sleeper, and performed in a rare European tour in 1996, which became the subject of the documentary Wild Man Blues.
Allen was born and raised in New York City, the son of Nettie (née Cherrie; November 8, 1906 – January 27, 2002), a bookkeeper at her family's delicatessen, and Martin Konigsberg (December 25, 1900 – January 13, 2001), a jewelry engraver and waiter. His family was Jewish and his grandparents were immigrants who spoke Yiddish and German; both of his parents were born and raised on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Allen has a sister, Letty, who was born in 1943 and raised in Midwood, Brooklyn. His childhood was not particularly happy: his parents did not get along, and he had a rocky relationship with his stern, temperamental mother. Allen spoke Yiddish during his early years and, after attending Hebrew school for eight years, went to Public School 99 (now The Isaac Asimov School for Science and Literature) and to Midwood High School. During that time, he lived in an apartment at 1402 Avenue K, between East 14th and 15th Streets. He impressed students with his extraordinary talent at card and magic tricks.
To raise money he began writing jokes (or "gags") for the agent David O. Alber, who sold them to newspaper columnists. According to Allen, his first published joke read: "Woody Allen says he ate at a restaurant that had O.P.S. prices – over people's salaries."
He began to call himself Woody Allen. He was an extremely talented young comedian and would later joke that when he was young he was often sent to inter-faith summer camps, where he "was savagely beaten by children of all races and creeds." At the age of 17, he legally changed his name to Heywood Allen.
After high school, he attended New York University (NYU), where he studied communication and film. He later briefly attended City College of New York and eventually taught at The New School. He also studied with writing teacher Lajos Egri.
After his false starts at NYU and City College, he became a full-time writer for Herb Shriner, earning $75 a week at first. At the age of 19, he started writing scripts for The Ed Sullivan Show, The Tonight Show, specials for Sid Caesar post-Caesar's Hour (1954–1957), and other television shows. By the time he was working for Caesar, he was making $1500 a week; with Caesar he worked alongside Danny Simon, whom Allen credits for helping him to form his writing style.
In 1961, he started a new career as a stand-up comedian, debuting in a Greenwich Village club called the Duplex. Examples of Allen's standup act can be heard on the albums Standup Comic and Nightclub Years 1964–1968 (including his classic routine entitled "The Moose").
Allen wrote for the popular Candid Camera television show, and appeared in some episodes. Together with his managers, Allen developed a neurotic, nervous, and intellectual persona for his stand-up routine, a successful move which secured regular gigs for him in nightclubs and on television.
Allen started writing short stories and cartoon captions for magazines such as The New Yorker; he was particularly inspired by the tradition of four prominent New Yorker's humorists, S. J. Perelman, George S. Kaufman, Robert Benchley and Max Shulman, whose material he modernized. Allen is also an accomplished author having published four collections of his short pieces and plays. These are Getting Even, Without Feathers, Side Effects and Mere Anarchy. His early comic fiction was heavily influenced by the zany, pun-ridden humour of S.J. Perelman. Allen brought significant innovation to the comedy monologue genre and his stand-up comedy is considered highly influential.
He also became a successful Broadway playwright and wrote Don't Drink the Water in 1966. It starred Lou Jacobi, Kay Medford, Anita Gillette and Allen's future movie co-star Anthony Roberts. A film adaptation of the play, directed by Howard Morris, was released in 1969 starring Jackie Gleason. Because he was not particularly happy with the 1969 film version of his play, in 1994 Allen directed and starred in a third version for television, with Michael J. Fox and Mayim Bialik.
The next play Allen wrote that was produced on Broadway was Play It Again, Sam, which he also starred in. The play opened on February 12, 1969, and ran for 453 performances. It also featured Diane Keaton and Anthony Roberts. Allen, Keaton and Roberts would reprise their roles in the film version of the play, directed by Herbert Ross. For its March 21 issue, Life featured Allen on its cover.
He has written several one-act plays, including 'Riverside Drive' and 'Old Saybrook' which both explore well-known Allen themes. They have been produced in England for the first time by The Nuffield Theatre, a south-coast art house theatre, Southampton (September 2010) and directed by Patrick Sandord.
All of Allen's early films were formless comedies like those of the Marx Brothers. As all pure comedies, they needed only a thin plot, and were constituted entirely of comic inventions, a non-stop sequence of sight gags, one-liners and slapstick.
His first movie was the Charles K. Feldman production What's New, Pussycat? in 1965, for which he wrote the initial screenplay. Warren Beatty hired him to re-write a script and to appear in a small part in the movie. Over the course of the re-write, Beatty's role was lessened and Allen's increased. Beatty was upset and quit the production. Peter O'Toole was hired for the Beatty role, and Peter Sellers was brought in as well; Sellers was a big enough star to demand many of Woody Allen's best lines/scenes, prompting hasty re-writes. Because of this experience, Allen realized the importance of having control of his own writing. Despite that fact that most of his movies do not gross well and the fact that due to the small amounts of money his producers are able to raise he asks his actors to work for far less than what they would normally be paid, Allen remains one of a handful of writers and directors who has been able to maintain complete control over his own work.
Allen's first directorial effort was What's Up, Tiger Lily? (1966, co-written with Mickey Rose), in which an existing Japanese spy movie – Kokusai himitsu keisatsu: Kagi no kagi (1965), "International Secret Police: Key of Keys" – was redubbed in English by Allen and his friends with entirely new, comic dialogue.
Allen also appeared in Feldman's follow-up to What's New Pussycat, the James Bond spoof Casino Royale. A number of writers contributed to the film, but once again Allen scripted his own sequences, although in this case was uncredited.
Allen directed Take the Money and Run in 1969. That same year he starred in his own TV special, The Woody Allen Special. On the show he performed standup comedy routines before a live audience and acted in a sketch with Candace Bergen in which they appeared nude but their bodies were kept hidden from view by the camera. The special also had guest appearances by the pop vocal group The 5th Dimension singing their hit singles "Workin' On A Groovy Thing" and "Wedding Bell Blues". The show's sponsor, Libby's, broadcast comical commercials starring Tony Randall as a detective.
From 1971 to 1975 Allen directed Bananas, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask), Sleeper, and Love and Death. Take the Money and Run and Bananas were co-written by his childhood friend, Mickey Rose.
"In Beverly Hills...they don't throw their garbage away. They make it into television shows."
-Woody Allen
A life-size statue of Woody Allen was erected in the Spanish city of Oviedo (2002).
| ||||||
After his initial pure comedies in the tradition of the Marx Brothers, Allen switched to sophisticated Lubitsch-like comedies, adding a plot and reducing the comic inventions. Allen settled on this genre for his subsequent career. In 1972, he wrote and starred in the film version of Play It Again, Sam, which was directed by Herbert Ross. In 1976, he starred in The Front (directed by Martin Ritt) a humorous and poignant account of Hollywood blacklisting during the 1950s.
Annie Hall won four Academy Awards in 1977, including Best Picture and Best Actress in a Leading Role for Diane Keaton. Annie Hall set the standard for modern romantic comedy and also started a minor fashion trend with the unique clothes worn by Diane Keaton in the film (the masculine clothing, such as ties with cardigans, was actually Keaton's own). While in production, its working title was "Anhedonia", a term that means the inability to feel pleasure and its plot revolved around a murder mystery. Apparently the murder mystery plot did not work (and was later used in his 1993 Manhattan Murder Mystery), so Allen re-cut the movie after production ended to focus on the romantic comedy between Allen's character, Alvy Singer, and Keaton's character, Annie Hall. The new version, retitled Annie Hall (named after Keaton, Hall being her given last name and Annie a nickname), still deals with the theme of the inability to feel pleasure. The film is ranked at No. 35 on the American Film Institute's "100 Best Movies" and at No. 4 on the AFI list of "100 Best Comedies".
Manhattan, released in 1979, is a black-and-white film that can be viewed as an homage to New York City. As in many other Allen films, the protagonists are upper-class academics. Even though it makes fun of pretentious intellectuals, the story is packed with obscure references which makes it less accessible to a general audience. The love-hate opinion of cerebral persons found in Manhattan is characteristic of many of Allen's movies including Crimes and Misdemeanors and Annie Hall. Manhattan focuses on the complicated relationship between a middle-aged Isaac Davis (Allen) and a 17-year-old Tracy (Mariel Hemingway).
Between Annie Hall and Manhattan, Allen wrote and directed the gloomy drama Interiors (1978), in the style of the late Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, one of Allen's chief influences. Interiors represented a significant departure from Allen's "earlier, funnier comedies" (a line from 1980's Stardust Memories).
Allen's 1980s films, even the comedies, have somber and philosophical undertones. Some are influenced by the works of European directors, notably Ingmar Bergman and Federico Fellini. September resembles Bergman's Autumn Sonata, and Allen uses many elements from Bergman's Wild Strawberries in Another Woman. Similarly, the Federico Fellini classic Amarcord strongly inspired Radio Days.
Stardust Memories features Sandy Bates, a successful filmmaker played by Allen, who expresses resentment and scorn for his fans. Overcome by the recent death of a friend from illness, the character states, "I don't want to make funny movies any more" and a running gag has various people (including a group of visiting space aliens) telling Bates that they appreciate his films, "especially the early, funny ones." Allen believes this to be one of his best films.
Allen combined tragic and comic elements in such films as Hannah and Her Sisters and Crimes and Misdemeanors, in which he tells two stories that connect at the end. He also produced a vividly idiosyncratic tragi-comical parody of documentary, Zelig.
He made three films about show business: Broadway Danny Rose, in which he plays a New York show business agent, The Purple Rose of Cairo, a movie that shows the importance of the cinema during the Depression through the character of the naive Cecilia, and Radio Days, which is a film about his childhood in Brooklyn and the importance of the radio. Purple Rose was named by Time Magazine as one of the 100 best films of all time and Allen has described it as one of his three best films, along with Stardust Memories and Match Point. (Allen defines them as "best" not in terms of quality but because they came out the closest to his original vision.)
In 1989, Allen teamed up with directors Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese to make New York Stories, an anthology film about New Yorkers. Allen's short, "Oedipus Wrecks," is about a neurotic lawyer and his critical mother. His short pleased critics, but New York Stories bombed at the box office.
His 1992 film Shadows and Fog is a black-and-white homage to the German expressionists and features the music of Kurt Weill. Allen then made his critically acclaimed drama Husbands and Wives (1992), which received two Oscar nominations: Best Supporting Actress for Judy Davis and Best Original Screenplay for Allen. His film Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993) combined suspense with dark comedy and marked the return of Diane Keaton, Alan Alda and Anjelica Huston.
He returned to lighter movies like Bullets Over Broadway (1994), which earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Director, followed by a musical, Everyone Says I Love You (1996). The singing and dancing scenes in Everyone Says I Love You are similar to many musicals starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. The comedy Mighty Aphrodite (1995), in which Greek drama plays a large role, won an Academy Award for Mira Sorvino. Allen's 1999 jazz-based comedy-drama Sweet and Lowdown was also nominated for two Academy Awards for Sean Penn (Best Actor) and Samantha Morton (Best Supporting Actress). In contrast to these lighter movies, Allen veered into darker satire towards the end of the decade with Deconstructing Harry (1997) and Celebrity (1998). Allen made his only sitcom "appearance" to date (2009) via telephone on the show Just Shoot Me! in a 1997 episode, "My Dinner with Woody" which paid tribute to several of his films. Allen also provided the lead voice in the 1998 animated film Antz, which featured many actors he had worked with and had Allen play a character that was similar to his earlier neurotic roles.
Small Time Crooks (2000) was his first film with the DreamWorks studio and represented a change in direction: Allen began giving more interviews and made an attempt to return to his slapstick roots. Small Time Crooks was a relative financial success, grossing over $17 million domestically but Allen's next four films floundered at the box office, including Allen's most expensive film, The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (with a budget of $26 million). Hollywood Ending, Anything Else, Melinda and Melinda were given "rotten" ratings from film-review website Rotten Tomatoes and each earned less than $5 million domestically. Some critics claimed that Allen's films since 1999's Sweet and Lowdown were subpar and expressed concern that Allen's best years were now behind him. Others have been less harsh; reviewing the little-liked Melinda and Melinda, Roger Ebert wrote, "I cannot escape the suspicion that if Woody had never made a previous film, if each new one was Woody's Sundance debut, it would get a better reception. His reputation is not a dead shark but an albatross, which with admirable economy Allen has arranged for the critics to carry around their own necks." Woody gave his godson Quincy Rose a small part in Melinda and Melinda.
Match Point (2005) was one of Allen's most successful films in the past 10 years and generally received very positive reviews. Set in London, it starred Jonathan Rhys-Meyers and Scarlett Johansson. It is also markedly darker than Allen's first four films with DreamWorks SKG. In Match Point, Allen shifts his focus from the intellectual upper class of New York to the moneyed upper class of London. It earned more than $23 million domestically (more than any of his films in nearly 20 years) and over $62 million in international box office sales. Match Point earned Allen his first Academy Award nomination since 1998 for Best Writing – Original Screenplay and also earned directing and writing nominations at the Golden Globes, his first Globe nominations since 1987. In an interview with Premiere Magazine, Allen stated this was the best film he has ever made.
Allen returned to London to film Scoop, which also starred Johansson, Hugh Jackman, Ian McShane, Kevin McNally and Allen himself (which remains to be the last film Allen has acted in). The film was released on July 28, 2006, and received mixed reviews. He has also filmed Cassandra's Dream in London. Cassandra's Dream was released in November 2007 and stars Colin Farrell, Ewan McGregor and Tom Wilkinson.
After finishing his third London film, Allen headed to Spain. He reached an agreement to film Vicky Cristina Barcelona in Avilés, Barcelona and Oviedo, where shooting started on July 9, 2007. The movie stars Scarlett Johansson, Javier Bardem, Rebecca Hall and Penélope Cruz. Speaking of his experience there, Allen said: "I'm delighted at being able to work with Mediapro and make a film in Spain, a country which has become so special to me." Vicky Cristina Barcelona was well received, winning "Best Musical or Comedy" at the Golden Globe awards. Penélope Cruz received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in the film.
Allen has said that he "survives" on the European market. Audiences there have tended to be more receptive to Allen's films, particularly in Spain, France and Italy; countries where he has a large audience (something joked about in Hollywood Ending). "In the United States things have changed a lot, and it's hard to make good small films now", Allen said in a 2004 interview. "The avaricious studios couldn't care less about good films – if they get a good film they're twice as happy but money-making films are their goal. They only want these $100 million pictures that make $500 million."
In April 2008, he began filming for a movie focused more towards older audiences starring Larry David, Patricia Clarkson and Evan Rachel Wood. Released in 2009, Whatever Works,, described as a dark comedy, follows the story of a botched suicide attempt turned messy love triangle. Whatever Works was written by Allen in the 1970s and the character now played by Larry David was originally written for Zero Mostel, who died the year Annie Hall came out.
Allen's most recent project, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, filmed in London, stars Antonio Banderas, Josh Brolin, Anthony Hopkins, Anupam Kher, Freida Pinto and Naomi Watts. Filming started in July 2009. It was released theatrically in the US on September 23, 2010, following a Cannes debut in May 2010 and a screening at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 12, 2010. Allen has announced that his next film will be titled Midnight in Paris, which will star Adrien Brody, Owen Wilson, Marion Cotillard, Rachel McAdams, Kathy Bates, Michael Sheen and French First Lady Carla Bruni. The plot will follow a family travelling to Paris for a business trip, including a young engaged couple who see their lives transformed. Shooting took place in Paris in the summer of 2010.
Although best known for his films, Allen has also enjoyed a very successful career in theater, starting as early as 1960 when Allen wrote sketches for the revue From A to Z. His first great success was Don't Drink the Water, which opened in 1968 and ran for 598 performances for almost two years on Broadway. His success continued with Play it Again, Sam, which opened in 1969, starring Allen and Diane Keaton. The show played for 453 performances and was nominated for three Tony Awards, although none of the nominations were for Allen's writing or acting.
In the 1970s, Allen wrote a number of one-act plays, most notably God and Death, which were published in his 1975 collection Without Feathers.
In 1981, Allen's play The Floating Light Bulb opened on Broadway. The play was a critical success but a commercial flop. Despite two Tony Award nominations, a Tony win for the acting of Brian Backer (who also won the 1981 Theatre World Award and a Drama Desk Award for his work), the play only ran for 62 performances. As of January 2008, it is the last Allen work that ran on Broadway.
After a long hiatus from the stage, Allen returned to the theater in 1995 with the one-act Central Park West, an installment in an evening of theater known as Death Defying Acts that was also made up of new work by David Mamet and Elaine May.
For the next couple of years, Allen had no direct involvement with the stage, yet notable productions of his work were being staged. A production of God was staged at The Bank of Brazil Cultural Center in Rio de Janeiro, and theatrical adaptations of Allen's films Bullets over Broadway and September were produced in Italy and France, respectively, without Allen's involvement. In 1997, rumors of Allen returning to the theater to write a starring role for his wife Soon-Yi Previn turned out to be false.
In 2003, Allen finally returned to the stage with Writer's Block, an evening of two one-acts – Old Saybrook and Riverside Drive – that played Off-Broadway. The production marked the stage-directing debut for Allen. The production sold out its entire run.
Also that year, reports of Allen writing the book for a musical based on Bullets over Broadway surfaced, but no show ever formulated. In 2004, Allen's first full-length play since 1981, A Second Hand Memory, was directed by Allen and enjoyed an extended run Off Broadway.
In June 2007, it was announced that Allen would make two more creative debuts in the theater, directing a work that he did not write and directing an opera – a re-interpretation of Puccini's Gianni Schicchi for the Los Angeles Opera – which debuted at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on September 6, 2008. Commenting on his direction of the opera, Allen said, "I have no idea what I'm doing." His production of the opera opened the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy, in June 2009.
Allen is a passionate fan of jazz, which is often featured prominently in the soundtracks to his films. He began playing as a child and took his stage name from clarinetist Woody Herman. He has performed publicly at least since the late 1960s, notably with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band on the soundtrack of Sleeper. One of his earliest televised performances was on The Dick Cavett Show on October 20, 1971.
Woody Allen and his New Orleans Jazz Band play every Monday evening at Manhattan's Carlyle Hotel, specializing in classic New Orleans jazz from the early twentieth century. The documentary film Wild Man Blues (directed by Barbara Kopple) documents a 1996 European tour by Allen and his band, as well as his relationship with Previn. The band has released two CDs: The Bunk Project (1993) and the soundtrack of Wild Man Blues (1997).
Allen and his band played the Montreal Jazz Festival on two consecutive nights in June 2008.
| ||||||
His adopted daughter Bechet Dumaine, named after Sidney Bechet, was born in December 1998.
Dated Diane Keaton.
Ranked #43 in Empire (UK) magazine's Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time list (October 1997).
After his separation from Mia Farrow, they started a long public legal battle for their three children which was eventually won by Farrow. Allen was denied visitation rights with Dylan O'Sullivan Farrow and could only see his biological son, Satchel, under supervision. Moses Farrow chose not to see his father.
Speaks French.
Refuses to watch any of his movies once released.
He and former lover Mia Farrow had three children: Moses Farrow (adopted son, aka Misha), Dylan O'Sullivan Farrow (adopted daughter, aka Mallone), and Satchel Farrow (biological son, b. 1988, aka Ronan).
Suspended from New York University.
He loves Venice, and helped to raise funds to rebuild the Venetian theater La Fenice, which was destroyed by a fire.
Chosen by Empire magazine as one of the 100 Sexiest Stars in film history (#89) (1995).
Adopted his second daughter Manzie Tio Allen, named after Manzie Johnson, a drummer with Sidney Bechet's band, after she had been born in Texas. (February 2000).
Older brother of Letty Aronson.
Was once invited to appear with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Stanley Kubrick also considered casting him in Sydney Pollack's part in Eyes Wide Shut (1999).
Among his biggest idols are Ingmar Bergman, Groucho Marx, Federico Fellini, Cole Porter, and Anton Chekhov.
One of the most prolific American directors of his generation, he has written, directed, and more often than not starred in a film just about every year since 1969.
Accused British interviewer Michael Parkinson of having a morbid interest in his private life and rejected questions about the custody battle for his children during his appearance on the BBC's "Parkinson" (1971) in 1999.
Born at 10:55 PM EST.
Despite the advancement of sound technology, all of his films are mixed and released in monaural sound, although later ones have a mono Dolby Digital mix.
Made what was apparently his first and probably his last appearance at the Oscars in Hollywood to make a plea for producers to continue filming their movies in New York after the 9/11 tragedy (2002).
Wrote the concept for the film Hollywood Ending (2002) on the back of a matchbook. Years later, he found the matchbook with the notes for the film on it and made the film.
Attended the Cannes Film Festival for the first time to receive the Palm of Palms award for lifetime achievement (2002).
He has more Academy Award nominations (14) for writing than anyone else, all of them are in the Written Directly for the Screen category.
After completing his first musical, Everyone Says I Love You (1996), he stated that he'd like to do another in the future with an all-original score. Since making that statement, however, nothing has yet to materialize.
In addition to being a comedian, musician and filmmaker, he is also a respected playwright.
Some sources have incorrectly referred to his formal professional name as Woodrow. In his stand-up days, he referred to himself as Heywood.
Graduated from Midwood High School at Brooklyn College.
Son of bookkeeper Martin Konigsberg (December 25, 1900-January 13, 2001) and his wife Nettie Konigsberg (November 8, 1906-January 27, 2002).
Biography in "Who's Who in Comedy" by Ronald L. Smith, pp. 13-16. New York: Facts on File, 1992. ISBN 0816023387
Was voted the 19th greatest director of all time by Entertainment Weekly.
Has been nominated or won 136 awards, more than Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Harold Lloyd combined.
Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume Two, 1945-1985." Pages 20-29. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1988.
Has a look-alike puppet in the French show "Les guignols de l'info" (1988).
Ranked #4 in Comedy Central's 100 Greatest Stand-Up Comedians of All Time.
Biological son, Ronan Farrow, graduated from college at 15 and was accepted into Yale Law School.
Both of his grandfathers were immigrants, one of Austro-Jewish descent and the other of Russo-Jewish descent.
Longtime fan and season ticket holder of the NBA's New York Knicks.
Although he is barely interested in awards, he's one of the Academy's favorites - his 14 Oscar Nominations for Best Original Screenplay as of 2005 are a record for that category, and puts him ahead of Billy Wilder, who had 19 combined Oscar nominations for Writing and Directing. With 21 nominations in the combination of the top-three categories--acting, directing and writing--he holds the record there as well.
Directed 15 different actors in Oscar-nominated performances: Diane Keaton, Geraldine Page, Maureen Stapleton, Mariel Hemingway, Michael Caine, Dianne Wiest, Martin Landau, Judy Davis, Chazz Palminteri, Jennifer Tilly, Mira Sorvino, Sean Penn, Samantha Morton, Penélope Cruz, and himself. Keaton, Caine, Wiest, Sorvino, and Cruz won Oscars for their performances in one of his movies.
Is a fan of Alfredo Zitarrosa, one of the best Uruguayan musicians.
Ranked #10 in Empire (UK) magazine's Greatest Directors Ever! poll (2005).
Directed only one movie in which both of his longtime companions Diane Keaton and Mia Farrow appear in: Radio Days (1987)
He and Diane Keaton made 8 movies together: Annie Hall (1977), Love and Death (1975), Manhattan (1979), Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993), Radio Days (1987), Play It Again, Sam (1972), Interiors (1978) and Sleeper (1973).
He and Mia Farrow made 13 movies together: Broadway Danny Rose (1984), Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), Alice (1990), Another Woman (1988), The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), September (1987), Husbands and Wives (1992), A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy (1982), New York Stories (1989), Radio Days (1987), Shadows and Fog (1991) and Zelig (1983).
According to Mia Farrow's biography, "What Falls Away", Frank Sinatra offered to have Allen's legs broken when he was found to be having an affair with her adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Previn.
Married to Mia Farrow's adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn, from her second marriage with André Previn.
Does not allow his films to be edited for airlines and television broadcasts.
As a boy growing up in Brooklyn, he spent most of his time alone in his room practicing magic tricks or his clarinet.
Got hooked on movies when he was three years old, when his mother took him him to see Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). From that day, he said, theaters became his second home.
Told a reporter that he has earned more money from two real estate transactions than he has from all of his movies combined. Sold his long-held Fifth Avenue penthouse (which he had purchased for $600,000) for a profit of $17 million and a renovated townhouse for a profit of some $7 million (December 2005).
Five of his movies brought home his actresses Academy Awards: Annie Hall (1977) for Diane Keaton, Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) and Bullets Over Broadway (1994) both for Dianne Wiest, Mighty Aphrodite (1995) for Mira Sorvino and Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008) for Penélope Cruz.
His godson Quincy Rose is also a successful writer and actor.
Wrote What's Up, Tiger Lily? (1966), Take the Money and Run (1969) and Bananas (1971) with his childhood friend and first writing partner, Mickey Rose. Rose also co-wrote on all of Allen's earlier comedy albums and had a big hand in writing the famous "Moose" sketch.
Stating in an interview that he was "not interested in all that extra stuff on DVDs" and that he hopes his films would speak for themselves. Allen has never recorded an audio commentary or even so much has been interviewed for a DVD of any films with which he had been involved.
Distant cousin of Abe Burrows.
Of his own movies, Match Point (2005) is his favorite. His other favorites are The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), Husbands and Wives (1992) and Bullets Over Broadway (1994)_.
Was originally attached to co-star with Jim Carrey in the Farrelly Brothers comedy Stuck on You (2003), but decided to pass on the idea.
Was set to reprise his voice role in Antz (1998) for a planned direct-to-video Antz 2 but the project never got off the ground.
Is a vegetarian.
Awarded an honorary doctorate degree by Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, Spain (June 2007).
His variety of neuroses include: arachnophobia (spiders), entomophobia (insects), heliophobia (sunshine), cynophobia (dogs), altophobia (heights), demophobia (crowds), carcinophobia (cancer), thanatophobia (death), misophobia (germs). He admits to being terrified of hotel bathrooms.
After dropping out from New York University where he studied communication and film, he attended City College of New York.
The "Seinfeld" (1990) character George Constanza was originally planned to be a caricature of him.
Although depicting himself as nerd in his movies, he was a popular student and adept baseball and basketball player at high school.
According to Eric Lax's book Woody Allen's favorite films are (in order): Match Point (2005), The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), Stardust Memories (1980), Broadway Danny Rose (1984), and Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993).
His and Mia Farrow's twelve year relationship ended in a custody battle over their three children, in which she accused him of sexually molesting their daughter Dylan O'Sullivan Farrow. Farrow ultimately won custody of the children, only being allowed to see his son Ronan under supervision.
Although he was granted visitation rights for his son Ronan after a custody battle with Mia Farrow, their relationship is estranged (similar to his other children with Farrow, Moses and Dylan O'Sullivan Farrow). Ronan stated that he thinks that he cannot have a morally consistent relationship with a man who is his father and his brother-in-law.
While he has made many films that had several nominations for Best Director and Screenplay, Annie Hall and Hannah and Her Sisters are his only films so far to get a Best Picture nomination. Annie Hall then went on to win.
Manages his one film per year schedule by setting strict budgets. Actors large and small receive the same salary.
Writes his scripts on a typewriter.
He directed, wrote and starred in five of the American Film Institute's 100 Funniest Movies: Annie Hall (1977) at #4, Manhattan (1979) at #46, Take the Money and Run (1969) at #66, Bananas (1971) at #69 and Sleeper (1973) at #80.
Profiled in "American Classic Screen Interviews" (Scarecrow Press). [2010]
| ||||||
| ||||||
