Woody Allen

Name at birth: Allen Stewart Konigsberg

Woody Allen's on-screen persona is well known: a comical and brainy New York nebbish, nervously chatting about love, sex and death. Once a writer for Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows, and a popular stand-up comic in the 1960s, 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 since then he's been considered a major American 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), Match Point (2005, with Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Scarlett Johansson) and Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008, with Johansson and Javier Bardem). Allen is also an accomplished jazz clarinetist, a hobby featured in the 1998 documentary Wild Man Blues.