Woody Allen

Woody Allen, born Allan Stewart Konigsberg on November 30, 1935, at Mount Eden Hospital in the Bronx, New York City, is an American filmmaker, actor, writer, and comedian whose career spans eight decades. His parents, Nettie, a bookkeeper, and Martin Konigsberg, a jewelry engraver and waiter, raised him and his younger sister, film producer Letty Aronson, in Brooklyn's Midwood neighborhood. His grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Austria and Panevėžys, Lithuania, and spoke German, Hebrew, and Yiddish. Allen attended Public School 99 and Midwood High School, graduating in 1953. He subsequently enrolled at New York University to study communication and film before dropping out after failing a course titled "Motion Picture Production," and later briefly attended City College of New York in 1954. He studied with writing teacher Lajos Egri and later taught at The New School.

Allen began writing jokes at age 15 and by 16 was selling material to Broadway writers. Abe Burrows, co-author of Guys and Dolls, provided him with letters of introduction to Sid Caesar, Phil Silvers, and Peter Lind Hayes. At 19, Allen joined the NBC Writer's Development Program in 1955, followed by a position on The NBC Comedy Hour in Los Angeles and a full-time writing job for humorist Herb Shriner, initially at $25 per week. He went on to write for The Ed Sullivan Show, The Tonight Show, and Sid Caesar specials, eventually earning $1,500 per week while working alongside Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Larry Gelbart, and Neil Simon. He also credits Danny Simon with helping shape his writing style. In 1958, Allen co-wrote several Sid Caesar specials with Gelbart, and by 1962 he estimated he had written 20,000 jokes in a single year for various performers. He additionally wrote for Candid Camera and appeared in several of its episodes.

Allen transitioned to stand-up comedy in Greenwich Village, where he developed a monologue style built around the persona of an insecure, intellectual, fretful nebbish. He released three comedy albums, receiving a Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album nomination for his 1964 album Woody Allen. He also began contributing humor pieces to The New Yorker, drawing inspiration from humorists S. J. Perelman, George S. Kaufman, Robert Benchley, and Max Shulman. His published short story collections include Getting Even (1971), Without Feathers (1975), and Side Effects (1980).

On Broadway, Allen appeared as a performer in 1969 and accumulated credits across multiple productions, including From A to Z, Don't Drink the Water, Play It Again, Sam, The Floating Light Bulb, and George is Dead. Don't Drink the Water, for which he wrote the book, opened in 1966, and Play It Again, Sam followed in 1969. In 2014, Allen returned to Broadway as the book writer for the musical Bullets Over Broadway, an adaptation of his 1994 film of the same name, earning a Tony Award nomination for Best Book of a Musical that year.

As a filmmaker, Allen established himself as a prominent figure in the New Hollywood era. His early directorial work included the slapstick comedies Take the Money and Run (1969), Bananas (1971), Sleeper (1973), and Love and Death (1975). His 1977 romantic comedy-drama Annie Hall, which featured frequent collaborator Diane Keaton, won four Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Actress for Keaton. Allen has since directed films set predominantly in New York City, among them Manhattan (1979), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), and Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), as well as Interiors (1978), Stardust Memories (1980), Zelig (1983), Broadway Danny Rose (1984), The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), Radio Days (1987), Husbands and Wives (1992), Deconstructing Harry (1997), Match Point (2005), Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008), Midnight in Paris (2011), and Blue Jasmine (2013). Two of his films have been inducted into the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.

Among his many accolades, Allen holds the record for the most wins and nominations for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, with four Academy Awards total, ten BAFTA Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, and a Grammy Award. He has also received an Honorary Golden Lion in 1995, the BAFTA Fellowship in 1997, an Honorary Palme d'Or in 2002, and the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2014. From 1980 to 1992, Allen maintained a professional and personal relationship with actress Mia Farrow, collaborating with her on 13 films. He married Soon-Yi Previn in 1997, and the couple has adopted two children. In 2016, he wrote the Amazon Prime Video series Crisis in Six Scenes, and in 2020 he published a memoir, Apropos of Nothing, followed by a novel, What's With Baum?, in 2025.