Alan Arkin

Alan Arkin's first featured screen role was Rozanov in Norman Jewison's The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! in 1966; to the AFI, William Rose's screenplay was written to give ground to the improvising gifts of Jonathan Winters, Theodore Bikel, Carl Reiner and Arkin. The film drew four Oscar nominations, one of them for Arkin's acting, and at the Golden Globes the award for best actor in a comedy went to Arkin and the best picture award to the film. Five years later he moved to directing features with Little Murders, having made two short films late in the sixties. That film's title read on screen as Jules Feiffer's Little Murders, and the stage rights had been bought by Brodsky-Gould, the company Gould set up with his former press agent Jack Brodsky. Arkin acted in it himself, as Lieutenant Practice. Film Independent listed him first as a nominee in 2003 for Thirteen Conversations About One Thing and then as the winner in 2007 for Little Miss Sunshine, both entries in its supporting male category.