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Alan Alda Biography |
Alan Alda (born January 28, 1936 as Alphonso Joseph D'Abruzzo) is an American actor, writer, director and sometime political activist. He is most famous for his role of Hawkeye Pierce in the television series M*A*S*H and for being the host of the TV show Scientific American Frontiers.
His father, Robert Alda (Alphonso Giuseppe Giovanni Roberto D'Abruzzo), was a successful actor, and his mother Joan Brown was crowned Miss New York in a beauty pagent.
He contracted polio when he was seven years old, which kept him bedridden for two years as he received treatments.
He received his bachelor's degree from Fordham University in 1956. During his junior year, he studied in Europe where he acted in a play in Rome and performed with his father on television in Amsterdam. After graduation, he joined the Army Reserve and served for a sixth-month tour of duty as a gunnery officer in Korea. A year after graduation, he married Arlene Weiss, with whom he would have three daughters.
He began his career in the 1950's as a member of the Compass Players comedy revue.
In the eleven years of M*A*S*H, he won five Emmy Awards, wrote (or co-wrote) twenty episodes, and directed thirty episodes. Throughout his career, he has been nominated for the Emmy Award 29 times and the Tony Award twice, and has won seven People's Choice Awards, six Golden Globe awards, and three Director's Guild of America awards.
He has also appeared in at least two TV commercials. Both of these were in the small computer industry, first for Atari and later, with the rest of the M*A*S*H cast, for IBM's PS/2 product line with MicroChannel architecture.
Because of his prominent part in the enormous success of M*A*S*H, Alda had a platform to speak out on political topics, and has been a strong and vocal supporter of equal rights for women. As such, he has been something of a bogeyman for some political conservatives.
Alan Alda has also created the character of Nobel Prize winning physicist Richard Feynman in the play QED. The play is almost a one-man production, with only one other character. It was written by Peter Parnells, but the production and inspiration for the play came from Alda.
Films:
What Women Want
Keepers of the Frame
The Object of My Affection
Flirting with Disaster
Mad City
Murder at 1600
Everyone Says I Love You
Canadian Bacon
Manhattan Murder Mystery
Whispers in the Dark
Betsy's Wedding
Crimes and Misdemeanors
A New Life
Sweet Liberty
The Four Seasons
The Seduction of Joe Tynan
Same Time Next Year
California Suite
Free to Be You and Me
To Kill a Clown
The Mephisto Waltz
The Manshine War
The Extraordinary Seaman
Jenny
Paper Lion
Gone Are the Days |
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| Alan Alda Resources |
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