Alan Arkin, the Oscar-winning actor whose electrifying career spanned seven decades, has died at 89.
Arkin’s representative, Melody Korenbrot, confirmed his death to USA TODAY on Friday and pointed to a statement his sons Adam, Matthew and Anthony jointly issued on behalf of the family. People. “Our father was a uniquely gifted force of nature both as an artist and as a human being. A loving husband, father, grandfather and great-grandfather, he was admired and will be deeply missed.”
Arkin is best known to younger audiences for his role in the first two seasons of Netflix’s award-winning series “The Kominsky Method,” playing Michael Douglas’ acting coach character Sandy’s Hollywood agent Norman.
But the actor’s screen credits reveal his remarkable breadth, encompassing roles that have always been heralded, but not defined, by his sarcastic Brooklyn-Brit persona.
Asked by CBS News in a 2007 interview what his favorite role to date was, Arkin said: “The Kaiser role is my favorite.” More seriously, he identified with characters who “don’t know what they’re talking about, but are happy to give you advice.”
Arkin was always willing to share his thoughts on the craft of acting, though he had an uneasy relationship with the accolades that came with success.
Arkin is one of the few actors to receive an Oscar nomination for Best Actor in his first film. (He was 32 when he played a Soviet submarine in the 1966 comedy “The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming”) and is one of the oldest actors to win an Oscar. (He was 72 when he played the foul-mouthed grandfather in the 2006 indie hit “Little Miss Sunshine.”)
Despite Arkin’s four Academy Award nominations — including another best actor for 1968’s “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter,” opposite Clint Eastwood’s future wife Sondra Locke, and best supporting actor for 2012’s “Argo” — he’s not complaining. Words about evaluating artistic achievements.
“I think it’s all bullshit,” Arkin told USA TODAY shortly before the 2013 Oscars. “The whole thing is a dud. If you look at the moves that won Best Picture in the last 50 years, 20 of the funniest comedies.
Actors, Arkin believed, had a responsibility to dig into themselves to find authentic performances that served not their own vanity, but the emotional lives of those in dark theaters. He was offended by today’s Hollywood Scorecard, where actors are ranked by box office take.
“It’s crazy that the industry treats us like horses, first or second,” Arkin told a Screen Actors Guild Foundation audience in 2012. “I wanted to move people.”
Arkin grew up in an artistic Brooklyn household, the enterprising son of a writer and painter father and a teacher mother, both of Jewish heritage. As a boy, Arkin recalls improving his English and developing a passion for cinema as a result of visiting New York’s Thalia Theater with his father.
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But the hardships of Hollywood also attracted Arkin early on. Although his father later went to work as a set designer, it disappeared as a result of an eight-month strike. In the 1950s, the alleged communists Sen. During the hunt for Joseph McCarthy, unsubstantiated allegations against Argin’s father drove him out of future studio work.
Undeterred, Arkin pursues his dream career. Success came in his early 20s – but not for acting. He was a member of the folk group The Terriers, who had a chart-topping hit in the late 1950s with “The Banana Boat Song,” which was recorded around the same time by a young Harry Belafonte.
Arkin often spoke of an epiphany he had while singing on stage at the Olympia Theater in Paris. “I look at myself and ask, ‘Who am I and what am I doing?’ So I quit the next day and starved myself for two years,” he told CBS News.
The actor found enough work on various New York stages to earn an invitation to join a new development team in Chicago. He reluctantly went. “This is the beginning of everything,” Arkin said.
The group is Second City, a now-legendary improv group whose alumni include John Belushi, Bill Murray, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Steve Carell and Tina Fey. Second City took its comedic action to New York, and the spotlight finally returned to Arkin’s home in Los Angeles.
After “The Russians Are Coming” put Arkin on the A-list, hot projects flowed his way. His acting choices include social commentaries (“Catch-22,” 1970), Sherlock Holmes mysteries (“The Seven-Per-Cent Solution,” 1976), whimsical fables (“Edward Scissorhands,” 1990), sinister drama (“Glengarry Glen”) Ross , 1992), and dark comedy (“Cross Point Blank, 1997).
Then came a career revival of sorts, with Arkin’s acclaimed star turns in “Little Miss Sunshine” and “Argo.” But throughout his journey, Arkin was embarrassed by the way the entertainment industry complex nurtured its best talent.
“The amount of money that some actors make, I mean, you’re making millions of dollars just to come and say ‘hello,’ so it’s got to be a huge ‘hell-oo,'” he said, laughing at the cast. ‘Guilt event. Money “changes people when you’re rich, but you earn so much that your grandchildren never have to work.”
Arkin said that actors are responsible to their audience, not to themselves. As an occasional director (notably 1971’s “Little Murders” with Elliott Gould), Arkin said he often told auditioning actors the same thing.
“They’re doing lines and I’ll say, ‘That was great, now I’m going to do it again and lose the performance,’ and they’ll be so relieved,” she said. Actors feel free to be true to the performance they really wanted to give, not just a performance.
This is what Argin’s best roles reveal, when on the screen one does not see a crazed actor from Brooklyn, but a Puerto Rican widower trying to provide for his children (“Bobby,” 1969) or an elderly bank robber trying to pay off. Some medical bills (“Going in Style,” 2017).
“We live in a culture where sales are very pervasive,” Arkin said. “So if you’re authentic, you’ll be interesting.”
Three sons from his first two marriages – actors Anthony, Matthew and Adam Arkin – and his third wife, psychologist Suzanne Newlander.
