Alan Alda Biography

His father was involved in show business and his mother was a former Miss New York.

After graduating from Fordham University, Alda served as an officer in the U.S. Army Reserves, before heading for show business.

His father, Robert, was an actor, and brought Alan up around the culture of vaudeville comedy. He became a member of the acting company at the Cleveland Playhouse, on a grant from the Ford Foundation.

He was a great success with his improvisatory performances in Chicago’s Second City Company, and, from 1964, on the satirical TV weekly 'That Was the Week That Was'.

His first film role was in 'Gone Are The Days' in 1963, adapted from the Broadway play in which Alda had starred. His other film roles of the time, almost all critically more successful than popular, included 'Paper Lion' and 'To Kill a Clown'.

Filming 'The Glass House', a Truman Capote prison drama in Utah State Prison, Alda was impressed by a television pilot script based on Robert Altman's hit feature film, 'M*A*S*H'. Alda auditioned for a part in the programme in 1972 and was given the role of Hawkeye Pierce.

The show, which ran for 11 years, was a pacifistic satire of the horrors of war, and allowed Alda to employ his acting, writing and directing talents. By the time it ended in 1983, he had been honoured with Emmys for all three skills - he remains the only person to have been honoured in all three categories. Alda performed cartwheels the first time he won an Emmy Award.

In addition to a separate sitcom, 'We’ll Get By', Alda managed to find time to make films during 'M*A*S*H', with 'California Suite', 'Same Time', and, in his 1981 directorial debut, 'The Four Seasons'. Alda was the only cast member to appear in all 252 episodes. As well as acting in the series, Alda turned his hand to writing and directing. He directed the show's finale and by the final season had become a producer and creative consultant.

Beginning a collaboration with Woody Allen, and deliberately playing against type, Alda starred in Allen’s 1989 film 'Crimes and Misdemeanors'. He reunited with the director for 'Manhattan Murder Mystery 'in 1993 and 'Everybody Says I Love You' in 1996.

A prolific activist and off-screen commentator, Alda continues to juggle his film career with involvement in major political and social causes.

In 2005, Alda published the first volume of his memoirs, ‘Never Have Your Dog Stuffed: And Other Things I've Learned’. This was followed by ‘Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself’.

Alda is a fan of cosmology and appeared when the BBC covered the opening of the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva in September 2008.