Woody Allen Biography

Woody Allen is the Oscar-winning director of Annie Hall, Midnight in Paris and dozens of other films.

Once a writer for Sid Caesar’s Your Show of Shows, and then a popular stand-up comic in the 1960s, Woody Allen came into his own in the 1970s as a writer, actor and director in movie comedies like Bananas (1971) and Sleeper (1973). His on-screen persona was by then well established: a comical and brainy New York nebbish, nervously fretting about love, sex and death.

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); the film turned him from a well-regarded niche comedian into a major American filmmaker.

From 1975 to 2020 he released a movie nearly every year, a remarkable pace for any director. The films included dramas such as Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) and Husbands and Wives (1992), thoughtful romances like Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), and lighthearted comedies such as Zelig (1983) and Bullets Over Broadway (1994). Allen typically wrote, directed, and starred in his movies until the early 2000s, when he began to leave the acting to others. His last performance in one of his own feature films was as a narrator of the 2016 romantic comedy Café Society.

In 1992, Allen endured a storm of publicity after leaving his longtime lover, actress Mia Farrow, for her adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Previn. In the aftermath, Farrow accused Allen of sexually abusing their seven-year-old adopted daughter, Dylan, during a post-breakup visit to Farrow’s Connecticut home. After months of investigation, the New York Department of Social Services found “no credible evidence” of abuse and a Yale-New Haven Hospital clinic concluded that Dylan had not been molested but may have been coached by Farrow. No charges were ever filed, and Allen has always insisted that no such thing happened. However, Farrow’s accusation, along with Allen’s affair with her daughter, proved a toxic PR combination and led to public assumptions that Allen was a bad fellow.

The scandal may have turned off filmgoers, but it didn’t slow down Allen’s movie making. His films in the next decades included Small Time Crooks (2000, with Tracey Ullman), Anything Else (2002, starring Christina Ricci), Match Point (2005, with Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Scarlett Johansson), Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008, with Johansson and Javier Bardem), and the surprisingly popular romantic comedy Midnight in Paris (2011). The latter film was nominated for best picture, and Allen won the Oscar for best original screenplay. Allen’s 50th feature was the 2023 murder-romance drama Coup de Chance.

Woody Allen is also an accomplished jazz clarinetist, a hobby featured in the 1998 documentary Wild Man Blues.