Alan Alda

Alan Alda, born Alphonso Joseph D'Abruzzo on January 28, 1936, in Manhattan, is an American actor and filmmaker whose career spans seven decades on stage and screen. His father, Robert Alda, was an actor and singer of Italian descent who constructed the family's stage name by combining the first two letters of his own first and last names. Alda's mother, Joan Browne, was a homemaker and former beauty-pageant winner of Irish descent who was later diagnosed with schizophrenia. At age seven, Alda contracted polio, and his parents treated the disease using a regimen developed by Elizabeth Kenny that involved applying hot woollen blankets to his limbs and stretching his muscles. He attended Archbishop Stepinac High School in White Plains, New York, and went on to study English at Fordham University in the Bronx, where he was a student staff member of the FM radio station WFUV. During his junior year he studied in Paris, acted in a play in Rome, and performed with his father on television in Amsterdam. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1956 and subsequently served six months of active duty at Fort Benning as a member of the ROTC before completing his service in the Army Reserve in New York City. His half-brother Antony Alda, also an actor, was born in 1956.

Alda began his professional career in the late 1950s as a member of the Compass Players, an improvisational comedy revue directed by Paul Sills, and later joined Second City in Chicago. He joined the acting company at the Cleveland Play House during the 1958–1959 season through a Ford Foundation grant, appearing in productions including To Dorothy a Son, Heaven Come Wednesday, Monique, and Job. His Broadway career began in 1959 and extended through 2014. Among his earliest New York stage credits were the play Only in America and Fair Game for Lovers. In 1961, he portrayed Charlie Cotchipee in Ossie Davis's play Purlie Victorious on Broadway. He appeared in the November 1964 world premiere of the stage version of The Owl and the Pussycat at the August Wilson Theatre, playing Felix the Owl opposite Diana Sands, and continued in the role through the 1964–65 Broadway season. That same year he received a Theatre World Award. In 1966 he starred in the musical The Apple Tree on Broadway alongside Barbara Harris, earning his first Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Musical.

Alda's Broadway work continued in subsequent decades with productions including Jake's Women, for which he received a Tony Award nomination in 1992, and Glengarry Glen Ross in 2005, which brought him both a third Tony Award nomination and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Ensemble Performance. He also appeared on Broadway in QED. His stage work across these productions established a Broadway presence that ran alongside his extensive film and television career.

On screen, Alda is most widely recognized for portraying Captain Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce in the CBS wartime sitcom M*A*S*H, which ran from 1972 to 1983. He was the only series regular to appear in all 256 episodes, and he also wrote 19 episodes and directed 32, including the 2.5-hour 1983 series finale "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen." He received 21 Emmy Award nominations for the role and won five. Over the course of his career he accumulated six Primetime Emmy Awards in total, including one for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series for his portrayal of Senator Arnold Vinick in The West Wing. Additional Emmy nominations came for his work in And the Band Played On in 1993, ER in 2000, 30 Rock in 2009, and The Blacklist in 2015. He also held recurring roles in The Big C from 2011 to 2013, Horace and Pete in 2016, Ray Donovan from 2018 to 2020, and The Good Fight from 2018 to 2019.

Alda's film career includes starring roles in Same Time, Next Year and California Suite, both released in 1978, and The Seduction of Joe Tynan in 1979. He made his directorial debut with The Four Seasons in 1981. He appeared in Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors in 1989, Manhattan Murder Mystery in 1993, Everyone Says I Love You in 1996, and Flirting with Disaster in 1996. His portrayal of Owen Brewster in Martin Scorsese's The Aviator in 2004 earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Later film credits include Tower Heist in 2011, Bridge of Spies in 2015, and Marriage Story in 2019. He received six Golden Globe Awards over the course of his career, along with nominations for a Grammy Award, three Tony Awards, and two BAFTA Awards. In 2008 he received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Audio Book, Narration and Storytelling Recording for Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself. In 2019 he received the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award. Alda also hosts the podcast Clear+Vivid with Alan Alda and previously hosted Science Clear+Vivid. He was originally from New York, New York.