Alan Wolf Arkin (born March 26, 1934) is an American actor, director, musician and singer. He is known for starring in such films as
Wait Until Dark,
The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming,
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter,
Catch-22,
The In-Laws,
Edward Scissorhands,
Glengarry Glen Ross,
Thirteen Conversations About One Thing,
Little Miss Sunshine, and
Argo, the last two of which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He is the father of actors Adam Arkin, Anthony Arkin, and Matthew Arkin.
Arkin was born in Brooklyn, New York City, the son of Beatrice (née Wortis), a teacher, and David I. Arkin, a painter and writer who mostly worked as a teacher.[1] Arkin was raised in a Jewish family with "no emphasis on religion"; his grandparents were immigrants from Odessa, Ukraine, Russia, and Germany.[2][3] The family moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles when Arkin was 11 years old,[2] but an eight-month Hollywood strike cost Arkin's father a set designer job he had wanted to keep. During the 1950s Red Scare, Arkin's parents were accused of being Communists,
which led to David Arkin losing his job when he refused to answer
questions about his political affiliation. David challenged the
dismissal and was ultimately vindicated, but only after his death.[4] Arkin attended Bennington College in Vermont.
Arkin, who had been taking acting lessons since age 10, became a
scholarship student at various drama academies, including one run by the
Stanislavsky student Benjamin Zemach, who taught Arkin a psychological approach to acting.
[5] Arkin attended Los Angeles City College from 1951 to 1953. He also attended Bennington College. With two friends, he formed the folk music group The Tarriers, in which Arkin sang and played guitar. The band members co-composed the group's 1956 hit "The Banana Boat Song", a reworking, with some new lyrics, of a traditional, Jamaican calypso folk song of the same name, combined with another titled "Hill and Gully Rider".
[6] It reached #4 on the
Billboard magazine chart the same year as Harry Belafonte's better-known hit version.
[7] The group appeared in the 1957 Calypso-exploitation film
Calypso Heat Wave, singing "Banana Boat Song" and "Choucoune".
[citation needed]
From 1958 to 1968, Arkin performed and recorded with the children's folk group, The Baby Sitters.
[8] He also performed the role of Dr. Pangloss in a concert staging of Leonard Bernstein's operetta
Candide, alongside Madeline Kahn's Cunegonde. Arkin was an early member of The Second City comedy troupe in the 1960s.
[9] Arkin and his second wife, Barbara Dana, appeared together on the 1970–71 season of
Sesame Street
as a comical couple named Larry and Phyllis who resolve their conflicts
when they remember how to pronounce the word "cooperate." In 1985, he
sang two selections by Jones & Schmidt on Ben Bagley's album
Contemporary Broadway Revisited.
Acting
with Shirley Knight in TV special,
The Defection of Simas Kudirka (1978)
In 1968, he appeared in the title role of
Inspector Clouseau (Peter Sellers had disassociated himself from the signature role), which was not well received.
His role in Little Miss Sunshine, as the foul-mouthed Grandfather Edwin with a taste for heroin, won him the BAFTA Film Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role and the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role.
On receiving his Academy Award on February 25, 2007, Arkin said, "More
than anything, I'm deeply moved by the open-hearted appreciation our
small film has received, which in these fragmented times speaks so
openly of the possibility of innocence, growth and connection".[11] At 72 years old, Arkin was the sixth oldest winner of the Best Supporting Actor Oscar.
In 2006–07, Arkin was cast in supporting roles in
Rendition as a US senator and
The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause as Bud Newman (Carol's Dad), starring with Tim Allen, Martin Short, Elizabeth Mitchell, Judge Reinhold and Wendy Crewson.
Directing
Arkin's directorial debut, in 1969, was a 12-minute children's film, People Soup, starring his sons Adam Arkin and Matthew Arkin. Based on a story he had published in the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in the 1950s, People Soup
is a fantasy about two boys who experiment with various kitchen
ingredients until they concoct a magical soup which transforms them into
different animals and objects.
Arkin with his wife Suzanne at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival
Arkin's most acclaimed directorial effort is
Little Murders, released in 1971. Written by cartoonist Jules Feiffer,
Little Murders is a black comedy film starring Elliott Gould and Marcia Rodd
about a girl, Patsy (Rodd), who brings home her boyfriend, Alfred
(Gould), to meet her severely dysfunctional family amidst a series of
random shootings, garbage strikes and electrical outages ravaging the
neighborhood. The film opened to a lukewarm review by Roger Greenspan,
[12] and a more positive one by Vincent Canby
[13] in the New York Times. Roger Ebert's
review in the Chicago Sun Times was more enthusiastic, saying, "One of
the reasons it works, and is indeed a definitive reflection of America's
darker moods, is that it breaks audiences down into isolated
individuals, vulnerable and uncertain."
[14]
Arkin also directed
Fire Sale (1977),
Samuel Beckett Is Coming Soon (1993) and
Arigo (2000).
Writing
Arkin is the author of many books, including the children's stories
Tony's Hard Work Day (illustrated by James Stevenson, 1972),
The Lemming Condition (illustrated by Joan Sandin, 1976),
Halfway Through the Door: An Actor's Journey Toward Self (1979) and
The Clearing (1986 continuation of
Lemming). In March 2011, he released his memoir,
An Improvised Life.
[15]
Personal life
Arkin has been married three times. He and Jeremy Yaffe, to whom he was married from 1955 to 1961, have two sons: Adam Arkin, born August 19, 1956, and Matthew Arkin, born March 21, 1959. In 1967, Arkin had son Anthony (Tony) Dana Arkin with actress-screenwriter Barbara Dana (born 1940), to whom he was married from June 16, 1964 to the mid-1990s. In 1996, Arkin married a psychotherapist, Suzanne Newlander.[4] As of 2007, they live in New Mexico.
Filmography
Film
Television
| 1964 |
East Side/West Side |
Ted Miller |
"The Beatnik and the Politician" |
| 1966 |
ABC Stage 67 |
Barney Kempinski |
"The Love Song of Barney Kempinski"
Nominated – Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Single Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Drama |
| 1970–71 |
Sesame Street |
Larry |
unknown episodes |
| 1979 |
Carol Burnett & Company |
Himself |
Episode 1, Season 2 |
| 1980 |
The Muppet Show |
Himself |
Episode 20, Season 4 |
| 1983 |
St. Elsewhere |
Jerry Singleton |
3 episodes: "Ties That Bind", "Lust En Veritas", "Newheart" |
| 1985 |
Faerie Tale Theatre |
Bo |
"The Emperor's New Clothes" |
| 1987 |
Harry |
Harry Porschak |
March 4–25, ABC TV series |
| 1997 |
Chicago Hope |
Zoltan Karpathein |
"The Son Also Rises"
Nominated – Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor – Drama Series |
| 2001–02 |
100 Centre Street |
Joe Rifkind |
A&E TV series |
| 2005 |
Will & Grace |
Marty Adler |
"It's a Dad, Dad, Dad, Dad World" |
| 2006–07 |
Boston Legal |
Prosecutor |
Two episodes in Season 3 |
