Woody Allen

Woody Allen 1935-, American actor, writer, and director, one of contemporary America's leading filmmakers, b. Brooklyn, N.Y., as Allen Stewart Konigsberg. 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). Several subsequent films failed to achieve the critical and popular plaudits earned by many of his earlier films, but Match Point (2005), a tale of wealth, lust, crime, and luck set in London, did much to revive his flagging reputation. Allen again used the city as the setting for the comedy Scoop (2006) and the drama Cassandra's Dream (2008) and turned to Catalonia, Spain, for his sensual, melancholy-tinged comedy Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008). Allen also has written humorous prose pieces, many published in The New Yorker, and plays. In 1992, in a bitter public dispute, Allen left Mia Farrow for her adopted daughter then sued the actress for custody of their children and lost (1993).

Bibliography: See his The Insanity Defense: The Complete Prose (2007); biographies by E. Lax (1991), J. Baxter (1999), and M. Meade (2000); E. Lax, Conversations with Woody Allen (2007); 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.

Allen, Woody (Allen Stewart Konigsberg) (1935–), New York‐born actor, film director and producer, and author, began his career as a writer for television comedy and as a nightclub entertainer. Since 1964 he has been a very popular motion‐picture actor whose persona is that of a wistful, wry, self‐deprecating figure. In addition to films he has written comic plays, Don't Drink the Water (1966), Play It Again, Sam (1969), and The Floating Lightbulb (1981). Brief humorous sketches, mostly from The New Yorker, have been collected in Getting Even (1971), Without Feathers (1975), and Side Effects (1980). Among the recent comedy‐dramas he has written for the screen are Deconstructing Harry (1997), Everyone Says I Love You (1997), Celebrity (1998), Sweet and Lowdown (1999), The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (2001), and Hollywood Ending (2002). In 2002 Allen received the Palme des Palmes, the Cannes Film Festival's lifetime achievement award.