Allen, Woody (redirected from Woody Allen)

Allen, Woody (Allen Stewart Konigsberg), 1935–, American actor, writer, and director, one of contemporary America's leading filmmakers, b. Brooklyn, N.Y. Allen began his career writing for television comedians and performing in nightclubs. His early film comedies, which often depict neurotic urban characters preoccupied with sex, death, and psychiatry, include Sleeper (1973) and Annie Hall (1977; Academy Award, best picture). Much of Allen's later work in comedy and drama explores these themes as well as a sophisticated New Yorker's various other preoccupations.

Among his later films are the stylish Manhattan (1979); Broadway Danny Rose (1984), a New York comedy; the probing family drama Hannah and Her Sisters (1986; Academy Award, best screenplay); the 1930s comedy Radio Days (1987); the searing Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989); Husbands and Wives (1992), a bittersweet domestic drama; the romantic and partly musical Everyone Says I Love You (1996); and the fictional jazz biography Sweet and Lowdown (1999). His 21st-century works include three comedies, Small Time Crooks (2000), Hollywood Ending (2002), and Anything Else (2003), and the tragicomedy Melinda and Melinda (2005), none of which achieved the critical and popular plaudits earned by many of his earlier films. Allen changed his venue to the city of London for Match Point (2005), a tale of wealth, lust, crime, and luck that won wide acclaim and did much to revive his flagging reputation, and again used the city as the setting for the comedy Scoop (2006). Allen has also written humorous prose pieces, many published in The New Yorker magazine, and plays. In 1992, in a bitter public dispute, Allen left Mia Farrow for her adopted daughter and sued the actress for custody of their children and lost (1993).

Bibliography

See biographies by E. Lax (1991), J. Baxter (1999), and M. Meade (2000); studies by D. Jacobs (1982), F. Hirsch (rev. ed. 1990), S. B. Girgus (1993), and D. Brode (1997); Woody Allen on Woody Allen (1995); documentary film Wild Man Blues (1998), dir. by B. Kopple.

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Allen, Woody

 orig. Allen Stewart Konigsberg

(born Dec. 1, 1935, Brooklyn, N.Y., U.S.) U.S. film director, screenwriter, and actor. After writing routines for comedians and performing as a nightclub comic, he wrote the Broadway play Don't Drink the Water (1966). His early films, such as Bananas (1971) and Sleeper (1973), combined highbrow comedy and slapstick. Later romantic comedies such as Annie Hall (1977), which won him two Academy Awards, and Manhattan (1979) offered a bittersweet view of New York life. He continued making films into the 21st century, most notably Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), and Bullets over Broadway (1994).

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Allen, Woody (b. Allen Stewart Konigsberg) (1935–  ) film actor, director, scriptwriter, playwright; born in New York City. He began his career writing jokes for columnists and comedians, then appeared in nightclubs with his own material, establishing the persona that would persist through most of his ensuing works: the flustered neurotic, obsessed with sex and death. His first film, as scriptwriter and actor, was What's New, Pussycat? (1965), and he went on to write, direct, and star in a series of films, some lightweight, some heavy, but the best of which—such as Annie Hall (1977), for which he won three Oscars—drew on his inimitable brand of verbal-situational absurdism. He is the author of two Broadway hits and collections of humorous essays, many of which first appeared in the New Yorker, and is a talented clarinetist who plays regularly in a New York jazz club. Said to be as neurotic in real life as in his scripted roles, he had a long-term relationship with one of his leading actresses, Mia Farrow, with whom he had a daughter. In 1992, their relationship dissolved in recriminations when he acknowledged an attachment with one of her young adopted daughters.