Biography for 
Woody Allen

Birth name 
Allen Stewart Konigsberg 
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Height 
5' 5" (1.65 m) 
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Mini biography 
Woody Allen was born on December 1, 1935, as Allen Konigsberg, in Brooklyn, New York. At the age of 15, he started selling one-liners to gossip columns. After working a while as a stand up comedian, he was hired to write What's New, Pussycat (1965) in 1965. He directed his first film a year later, What's Up, Tiger Lily? (1966) in 1966.


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IMDb mini-biography by 
David McCollum 
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Spouse 
Soon-Yi Previn (22 December 1997 - present) 2 children 
Louise Lasser (2 February 1966 - 1969) (divorced) 
Harlene Rosen (15 March 1956 - 1962) (divorced) 

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Trade mark 
Often makes films about a director making films, casts himself in lead role.

Frequently plays a neurotic New Yorker.

Frequently casts himself, Diane Keaton, Mia Farrow and Alan Alda.

Often talks to the camera directly.

Frequently casts Judy Davis.

All of his movies feature at least one character who is a writer. This is often Woody himself.

Nearly all of his films start and end with white-on-black credits, set in the Windsor typeface, set to jazz music, without any scrolling.

Films his dialog using long, medium-range shots instead of the typical intercut close-ups

His films are almost all set in New York City.

His films often include 2 female personality traits: one a spontaneous, energetic, offbeat artist and the other a motherly care-giver type...... and Woody (or his main male character) will have to chose between the two.

His characters (that he plays himself) are often a semi-famous, semi-successful film/tv writer, director, or producer... or a novelist

His thick black glasses, the same type since the 60s.


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Trivia 
Dated Diane Keaton.

Daughter Bechet Dumaine born; unknown if she's adopted. [December 1998]

Ranked #43 in Empire (UK) magazine's "The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time" list. [October 1997]

Barred from visiting his daughter, Dylan, during on-going custody battle. However, visits to Satchel are to resume. [5 December 1996]

Speaks French.

Refuses to watch any of his movies once released.

He and ex-lover Mia Farrow had three children: Moses Farrow (adopted), Dylan O'Sullivan Farrow (adopted daughter), and Satchel Farrow (biological son).

Suspended from New York University

He loves Venice, and helped to raise funds to rebuild the venetian theater La Fenice, which was destroyed by a fire.

Chosen by Empire magazine as one of the 100 Sexiest Stars in film history (#89). [1995]

Adopted second daughter Manzie Tio Allen after she was born in Texas. She is named after Manzie Johnson, a drummer with Sidney Bechet's (jazz clarinetist) band. The news was only announced on 23 August 2000. [February 2000]

Brother of Letty Aronson.

Frequently hires musical director Dick Hyman to adapt classic American songs and jazz works into his films.

Was once invited to appear with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Stanley Kubrick also considered casting him in Sydney Pollack's part in Eyes Wide Shut (1999).

Among his biggest idols are Ingmar Bergman, Groucho Marx, Federico Fellini, Cole Porter, and Anton Chekhov.

One of the most prolific American directors of his generation, he has written, directed, and more often than not starred in a film just about every year since 1969.

Accused British interviewer Michael Parkinson of having a "morbid interest" in his private life and rejected questions about the custody battle for his children during his appearance on the BBC's "Parkinson" (1971) in 1999.

Born at 10:55 PM EST

All of his films are mixed and released in monaural sound.

Made what was apparently his first and probably his last appearance at the Oscars in Hollywood in 2002 to make a plea for producers to continue filming their movies in New York, after the 9-11 tragedy.

Years ago, wrote the concept for the film Hollywood Ending (2002) on the back of a matchbook. Years later, he found the matchbook with the notes for the film on it and made the film.

Attended the Cannes Film Festival for the first time in 2002 to receive the Palm of Palms award for lifetime achievement.

He has more Academy Award nominations (thirteen) for writing than anyone else. All of them are in the Written Directly for the Screen category.

After completing his first musical, Everyone Says I Love You (1996), he stated that he'd like to do another in the future with an all-original score. In the seven-plus years since making that statement, however, nothing has yet to materialize.

In addition to being a comedian, musician and filmmaker, he is also a respected playwright.

Some sources have incorrectly referred to his formal professional name as "Woodrow." In his stand-up days, he referred to himself as "Heywood."

Graduated from Midwood High School at Brooklyn College.

Son of Martin Konigsberg and Nettie Konigsberg.

Biography in "Who's Who in Comedy" by Ronald L. Smith, pp. 13-16. New York: Facts on File, 1992. ISBN 0816023387

Was voted the 19th Greatest Director of all time by Entertainment Weekly.

Has been nominated or won 136 awards, more than Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton & Harold Lloyd combined.

Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume Two, 1945-1985". Pages 20-29. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1988.

Has his look-alike puppet in the French show "Guignols de l'info, Les" (1988).

Directed Carrie Fisher in Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), and Natalie Portman in Everyone Says I Love You (1996). This makes him the only director, other than George Lucas, who has worked with both actresses.

#4 in Comedy Central's 100 Greatest Standups of All Time.

Both of his grandfathers were immigrants, of Austro and Russo-Jewish descent.


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Personal quotes 
"Human Beings are divided into mind and body. The mind embraces all the nobler aspirations, like poetry and philosophy, but the body has all the fun."

"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work, I want to achieve it by not dying."

"I'm not afraid of dying...I just don't want to be there when it happens."

In 1977: "This year I'm a star, but what will I be next year? A black hole?"

"On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done just as easily as lying down."

[When asked if he liked the idea of living on on the silver screen...] "I´d rather live on in my apartment"

(On films) "I can't imagine that the business should be run any other way than that the director has complete control of his films. My situation may be unique, but that doesn't speak well for the business -- it shouldn't be unique, because the director is the one who has the vision and he's the one who should put that vision onto film."

"Basically I am a low-culture person. I prefer watching baseball with a beer and some meatballs."

"There are worse things in life than death. Have you ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman?"

"Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons."

"I do the movies just for myself like an institutionalized person who basket-weaves. Busy fingers are happy fingers. I don't care about the films. I don't care if they're flushed down the toilet after I die."

"Most of the time I don't have much fun. The rest of the time I don't have any fun at all."

[At the Academy Awards in 2002, explaining why he was the one introducing a montage of New York movies] "And I said, "You know, God, you can do much better than me. You know, you might want to get Martin Scorsese, or, or Mike Nichols, or Spike Lee, or Sidney Lumet..." I kept naming names, you know, and um, I said, 'Look, I've given you 15 names of guys who are more talented than I am, and, and smarter and classier...' And they said, 'Yes, but they were not available.'"

"If my film makes one more person miserable, I'll feel I've done my job."

"For some reason I'm more appreciated in France than I am back home. The subtitles must be incredibly good."

"My relationship with Hollywood isn't love-hate, it's love-contempt. I've never had to suffer any of the indignities that one associates with the studio system. I've always been independent in New York by sheer good luck. But I have an affection for Hollywood because I've had so much pleasure from films that have come out of there. Not a whole lot of them, but a certain amount of them have been very meaningful to me."

"The two biggest myths about me are that I'm an intellectual, because I wear these glasses, and that I'm an artist because my films lose money. Those two myths have been prevalent for many years."

"Join the army, see the world, meet interesting people - and kill 'em."

"Not only is there no God, but try getting a plumber on weekends."

"If it turns out that there is a God, I don't think that he's evil. But the worst that you can say about him is that basically he's an underachiever."

"To you, I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition."

"If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name at a Swiss bank."

"Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once."

"My one regret in life is that I am not someone else."

Man was made in God's image. Do you really think God has red hair and glasses?

With my complexion I don't tan, I stroke.

(On why he never watches his own movies): "I think I would hate them."

(About the audience): "I never write down to them. I always assume that they're all as smart as I am... if not smarter."

I always think it is a mistake to try and be young, because I feel the young people in the United States have not distinguished themselves. The young audience in the United States have not proven to me that they like good movies or good theatre. The films that are made for young people are not wonderful films, they are not thoughtful. They are these blockbusters with special effects. The comedies are dumb, full of toilet jokes, not sophisticated at all. And these are the things the young people embrace. I do not idolise the young.

When I was in my early twenties, I knew a man who has since died, who was older than me and also very crazy. He'd been in a straitjacket and institutionalised, and I found him very brilliant. When I would speak to him about writing, about life, art, women, he was very, very cogent - but he couldn't lead his own life, he just couldn't manage.

On shooting in London, 2004: 'In the United States things have changed a lot, and it's hard to make good small films now. There was a time in the 1950s when I wanted to be a playwright, because until that time movies, which mostly came out of Hollywood, were stupid and not interesting. Then we started to get wonderful European films, and American films started to grow up a little bit, and the industry became more fun to work in than the theatre. I loved it. But now it's taken a turn in the other direction and studios are back in command and are not that interested in pictures that make only a little bit of money. When I was younger, every week we'd get a Fellini or a Bergman or a Godard or Truffaut, but now you almost never get any of that. Filmmakers like myself have a hard time. The avaricious studios couldn't care less about good films - if they get a good film they're twice as happy, but money-making films are their goal. They only want these $100 million pictures that make $500m. That's why I'm happy to work in London, because I'm right back in the same kind of liberal creative attitude that I'm used to.'

"Not only is there no God, but try finding a plumber on Sunday."

I took a speed reading course and read 'War and Peace' in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.

"I know it sounds horrible, but winning that Oscar for "Annie Hall" didn't mean anything to me."

[On the Academy Awards circa 1978] "I have no regard for that kind of ceremony. I just don't think they know what they're doing. When you see who wins those things -- or who doesn't win them -- you can see how meaningless this Oscar thing is."

[On being nominated for an Oscar for "Crimes and Misdemeanors" (1989)] "You have to be sure to keep it very much in perspective. You think it's nice at the time because it means more money for your film, but as soon as you let yourself start thinking that way, something happens to the quality fo the work."

[On the Academy Awards circa 1978] "They're political and bought and negotiated for - although many worthy people have deservedly won - and the whole concept of awards is silly. I cannot abide by the judgement of other people, because if you accept it when they say you deserve an award, then you have to accept it when they say you don't".


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Salary 
What's Up, Tiger Lily? (1966) $66,000 

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Where are they now 
(August 2003) Is currently filming his follow-up to Anything Else (2003) in New York.

(November 2004) He is currently directing his original play "A Second Hand Memory" at the Atlantic Theatre Company in New York.


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Biography from Leonard Maltin's Movie Encyclopedia: 
The odyssey of this artist, who from beginnings as a cerebral-schlemiel stand-up comic has become one of the leading luminaries in American film, is unique in cinema history. Nobody has tried so doggedly to break free of the constraints of a triedand-true comic persona as Allen. And nobody has chalked up such a wildly mixed track record doing so. After years writing material for other comics, Allen began performing in 1961, turning his natural shyness into a comic device, delivering devastating one-liners in a sad deadpan and often punctuating his jokes with a little gulp that suggested he was about to vomit. His first movie job, as screenwriter and actor in 1965's What's New Pussycat?, instantly made him a demi-icon of the swinging sixties. In 1966's ingenious What's Up, Tiger Lily? Allen and several character actors (including his then-wife Louise Lasser) dubbed ridiculous dialogue onto an already silly-looking Japanese spy thriller. When making his first film as a director, the crime-documentary parody Take the Money and Run (1969), Allen had to be convinced to squelch a doomy, portentous side to which he gave free rein in later works: Money's editor, Ralph Rosenblum, recalled that its first cut ended with Allen being slaughtered, ê la Bonnie and Clyde, in a scene completely at odds with the rest of the movie.

After Money came a series of dazzling comedies-Bananas (1971), Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*but were afraid to ask) (1972), Sleeper (1973), Love and Death (1975)-in which Allen honed his Manhattan schlemiel persona to a fine edge while reveling in absurdist gags, outlandish situations, and pointed social satire. 1977's Annie Hall was a breakthrough movie; while very funny, it was also a serious and often moving look at modern urban romance, and it won Allen a Best Director Oscar (he shared the Academy's Best Screenplay Oscar with cowriter Marshall Brickman, and was also nominated for Best Actor). From that point on, Allen's films became more serious, starting with Interiors (1978), a heavy, Bergman-influenced drama which he wrote and directed but did not star in. The film, replete with selfconscious, straight-out-of-film-school visual compositions, was neither an artistic nor commercial success (although it received several Oscar nominations including Best Director and Screenplay), but seemed to provide Allen with the tools needed to blend comedy and drama. He's done that with varying degrees of success in all his subsequent films, which he makes at the steady rate of one a year.

Manhattan (1979), a bittersweet romantic comedy that painted New York City in nostalgic black-and-white and underscored its scenes with Gershwin music, was critically and commercially successful, and snagged him another Academy Award nomination for Best Screenplay. In the acerbic and candid self-portrait Stardust Memories (1980) he poked fun at those who yearned for his "earlier, funnier" films, then responded with A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy (1982) and the ingenious Zelig (1983) in which he played a human chameleon (thanks to some delicious cinematic sleight-of-hand). Broadway Danny Rose (1984), The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), and Radio Days (1987) garnered him more Oscar nominations for screenwriting. He nailed one for Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), one of his most mature films, and one of his biggest box office successes. His dramatic efforts from this period, September (1987) and Another Woman (1988), were marred by the same heavy-handedness he'd displayed in Interiors and were not well received. 1989's Crimes and Misdemeanors however, showed him back in form, albeit with a curious, existentialist opus that dispelled the notion that evil deeds never remain unpunished; it was a startling concept that he made not only convincing but, at times, uproariously funny. Alice (1990), a starring vehicle for his former love, Mia Farrow, had moments of brilliance but was on the whole very ordinary. Shadows and Fog (1992), another downbeat, leaden drama, found critics impatient with Allen's relentless efforts to recast himself as an American Bergman; it won the director some of his most uncomplimentary reviews.

Allen was married to Louise Lasser, who appeared in several of his earlier films, and then had long-term relationships with leading lady Diane Keaton and with Mia Farrow, who appeared in almost all of his 1980s pictures. Farrow and Allen had one son together, but became international gossip fodder in 1992 when he was forced to admit a romantic liaison with her adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn; she subsequently accused him of sexually molesting their child. This unprecedented publicity brouhaha (for two extremely private people) gave unexpected notoriety to Allen's concurrently released Husbands and Wives (1992), an excellent film that nonetheless caused snickering at many showings because of "leading" dialogue between Allen and Farrow. He then called on Diane Keaton to replace Farrow in Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993), his lightest comedy in years, and earned Oscar nominations for directing and cowriting Bullets Over Broadway (1994), the wryly comic tale of a young playwright at odds with the New York theatre world in the 1920s. He then turned to TV, directing, writing and starring in an adaptation of his playDon't Drink the Water (1994), and then acting opposite Peter Falk in an updated version of Neil Simon's The Sunshine Boys (1995).

Back in 1967 he costarred in the all-star James Bond spoof Casino Royale as "Jimmy" Bond, but in the intervening years he has rarely appeared in films he hasn't also written and directed himself. There have been a few notable exceptions: Play It Again, Sam (1972), adapted from his delightful hit Broadway play, which he performed many times on stage; The Front (1976), in which he was ideally cast as a nebbish who fronts for blacklisted writers during the McCarthy era; and Paul Mazursky's Scenes from a Mall (1991), in which he was amusingly and improbably cast as an I-live-in-L.A.-and-like-it lawyer (complete with pony tail!) opposite Bette Midler. It was an endearing and accomplished performance which, unfortunately, was not supported by an equally accomplished script. He also appeared briefly in Jean-Luc Godard's odd, experimental King Lear (1987).

Copyright © 1994 Leonard Maltin, used by arrangement with Signet, a division of Penguin Putnam, Inc.

