Best known as: The director and star of Annie Hall
Name at birth: Allen Stewart Konigsberg
Woody Allen's on-screen persona is well known: a comical and brainy New Yorker in nebbishy glasses, nervous about sex, death and modern times. Once a writer for Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows and a stand-up comic, Allen came into his own in the 1970s as a writer, actor and director in movie comedies like Bananas (1971) and Sleeper (1973). He won a best picture Oscar for his ode to modern love in New York, Annie Hall (1977, with frequent co-star and then-girlfriend Diane Keaton) and has since been considered an important filmmaker. Since the 1980s he has averaged about one movie a year, including serious films such as Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) and Husbands and Wives (1992), and lighthearted comedies such as Zelig (1983) and Bullets Over Broadway (1994). In 1993 he endured a storm of publicity after leaving his longtime lover Mia Farrow for her adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Previn. The scandal may have turned off filmgoers, but it didn't slow down Allen's movie making. His films since then have included Small Time Crooks (2000, with Tracey Ullman), Anything Else (2002, starring Christina Ricci) and Match Point (2005, with Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Scarlett Johansson). Allen is also an accomplished jazz clarinetist, a hobby featured in the 1998 documentary Wild Man Blues.
