Woody Allen

Playwright, Film director

1935 –

 Credit ยป
113

Who is Woody Allen?

Woody Allen is an American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician whose career spans more than 50 years.

He worked as a comedy writer in the 1950s, writing jokes and scripts for television and publishing several books of short humor pieces. In the early 1960s, Allen began performing as a stand-up comic, emphasizing monologues rather than traditional jokes. As a comic, he developed the persona of an insecure, intellectual, fretful nebbish, which he insists is quite different from his real-life personality. In 2004, Comedy Central ranked Allen in fourth place on a list of the 100 greatest stand-up comics, while a UK survey ranked Allen as the third greatest comedian.

By the mid-1960s Allen was writing and directing films, first specializing in slapstick comedies before moving into dramatic material influenced by European art cinema during the 1970s. He is often identified as part of the New Hollywood wave of filmmakers of the mid-1960s to late '70s. Allen often stars in his films, typically in the persona he developed as a standup. Some best-known of his over 40 films are Annie Hall, Manhattan, Hannah and Her Sisters, and Midnight in Paris. Critic Roger Ebert described Allen as "a treasure of the cinema".

Famous Quotes:

  • Does art imitate life, or does life imitate TV?
  • I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying.
  • How can I believe in God when just last week I got my tongue caught in the roller of an electric typewriter?
  • What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet.
  • Interestingly, according to modern astronomers, space is finite. This is a very comforting thought - particularly for people who can never remember where they left things.
  • Of all the wonders of nature, a tree in summer is perhaps the most remarkable; with the possible exception of a moose singing Embraceable You in spats.
  • My one regret in life is that I'm not someone else.
  • I don't believe in an after life, although I am bringing a change of underwear.
  • Basically my wife was immature. I'd be at home in the bath and she would come in and sink my boats.
  • The lion and the calf will lay down together, but the calf won't get much sleep..

We need you!

Help us build the largest biographies collection on the web!

Born
Dec 1, 1935
The Bronx
Also known as
  • Allan Stewart Konigsberg
  • Allen Konigsberg
  • Allen Stewart Konigsberg
  • Heywood Allen
Parents
Siblings
Spouses
Children
Religion
  • Judaism
  • Atheism
Ethnicity
  • Jewish people
Nationality
  • United States of America
Profession
Education
  • New York University
  • Midwood High School
  • City College of New York
Lived in
  • Brooklyn
  • The Bronx
  • New York City

Submitted
on July 23, 2013

Citation

Use the citation below to add to a bibliography:

Style:MLAChicagoAPA

"Woody Allen." Biographies.net. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Mar. 2024. <https://www.biographies.net/people/en/woody_allen>.

Discuss this Woody Allen biography with the community:

0 Comments

    Browse Biographies.net