Heywood "Woody" Allen (born Allan Stewart Konigsberg; November 30, 1935) is an American filmmaker, actor, writer, and comedian. In a career spanning more than seven decades, he has written for film, television, and theater. As a screenwriter, Allen holds the record of most wins (3) and nominations (16) for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. In addition to his four Academy Awards, he has also received numerous other accolades, including ten BAFTA Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, a Grammy Award, and nominations for an Emmy Award and a Tony Award. He received an Honorary Golden Lion in 1995, the BAFTA Fellowship in 1997, an Honorary Palme d'Or in 2002, and the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2014. Two of his films have been inducted into the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.
Allen began his career as part of a team of comedy writers for several Sid Caesar specials, and later wrote numerous humor pieces for The New Yorker as well as several Broadway plays, such as Don't Drink the Water (1966) and Play It Again, Sam (1969). He transitioned to working as a stand-up comedian in Greenwich Village, where he developed a monologue style and the persona of an insecure, intellectual, fretful nebbish. He released three comedy albums, earning a Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album nomination for Woody Allen (1964). Allen also published several books of short stories, such as Getting Even (1971), Without Feathers (1975) and Side Effects (1980).
Allen then established himself as prominent director of the New Hollywood era of auteur filmmakers. After writing, directing, and starring in the slapstick comedies Take the Money and Run (1969), Bananas (1971), Sleeper (1973), and Love and Death (1975), he directed his seminal work, Annie Hall (1977), a romantic comedy-drama featuring Allen and his frequent collaborator Diane Keaton. The film received widespread acclaim and won four Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay for Allen, and Best Actress for Keaton. Allen has since directed many films set in New York City, including Manhattan (1979), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), and Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989).
Since the 1970s, Allen has made a film almost every year. They include Interiors (1978), Stardust Memories (1980), Zelig (1983), Broadway Danny Rose (1984), The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), Radio Days (1987), Husbands and Wives (1992), Bullets Over Broadway (1994), Deconstructing Harry (1997), Match Point (2005), Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008), Midnight in Paris (2011), and Blue Jasmine (2013). In 2014, he returned to Broadway, adapting his 1994 film into the musical Bullets Over Broadway. He created and wrote the Amazon Prime Video series Crisis in Six Scenes (2016), and released a memoir, Apropos of Nothing (2020), and a novel, What's With Baum? (2025).
From 1980 to 1992, Allen had a professional and personal relationship with actress Mia Farrow. They collaborated on 13 films. The couple separated after Allen began a relationship in 1991 with Farrow's and Andre Previn's 21-year-old adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn. In 1992, Farrow publicly accused Allen of sexually abusing their adopted daughter, Dylan. Allen denied the allegation and was never charged with a crime, but the accusation received substantial media attention. Allen married Previn in 1997 and they have adopted two children.
Allen was born Allan Stewart Konigsberg at Mount Eden Hospital in the Bronx, New York City, on November 30, 1935, to Nettie (née Cherry; 1906–2002), a bookkeeper at her family's delicatessen, and Martin Konigsberg (1900–2001), a jewelry engraver and waiter. His grandparents were Jewish immigrants to the U.S. from Austria and Panevėžys, Lithuania. They spoke German, Hebrew, and Yiddish. He and his younger sister, film producer Letty Aronson, were raised in Brooklyn's Midwood neighborhood. Their parents were both born and raised on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
Allen's parents did not get along, and he had an estranged relationship with his mother. He spoke German in his early years. While attending Hebrew school for eight years, he also attended Public School 99, now the Isaac Asimov School for Science and Literature, and then Midwood High School, from which he graduated in 1953. Unlike his comic persona, he was more interested in baseball than school and was picked first for teams. He impressed students with his talent for cards and magic tricks.
Allen began to call himself Woody in high school. Some reports say he legally changed his name to Heywood Allen when he was 17. According to Allen, his first published joke read: "Woody Allen says he ate at a restaurant that had O.P.S. prices—over people's salaries." He was soon earning more than both of his parents combined. After high school, he attended New York University, studying communication and film in 1953, before dropping out after failing the course "Motion Picture Production". He briefly attended City College of New York in 1954, dropping out during his first semester. He taught himself rather than studying in the classroom. He later taught at The New School and studied with writing teacher Lajos Egri.
1950–1959: Comedy writing and television work
Allen began writing short jokes when he was 15, and the next year began offering them to various Broadway writers for sale. One of them, Abe Burrows, co-author of Guys and Dolls, wrote, "Wow! His stuff was dazzling." Burrows wrote Allen letters of introduction to Sid Caesar, Phil Silvers, and Peter Lind Hayes, who immediately sent Allen a check for just the jokes Burrows included as samples. As a result of the jokes Allen mailed to various writers, he was invited, then age 19, to join the NBC Writer's Development Program in 1955, followed by a job on The NBC Comedy Hour in Los Angeles, then a job as a full-time writer for humorist Herb Shriner, initially earning $25 a week. He began writing scripts for The Ed Sullivan Show, The Tonight Show, specials for Sid Caesar post-Caesar's Hour, and other television shows. By the time he was working for Caesar, he was earning $1,500 a week. He worked alongside Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Larry Gelbart, Neil Simon, and Danny Simon, whom Allen credits for helping form his writing style. In 2021, Brooks said of working with Allen, "Woody was so young then. I was about 24 when I started, but Woody must have been 19, but so wise, so smart. He had this tricky little mind and he'd surprise you, which is the trick of being a good comedy writer." In 1962 alone, he estimated that he wrote 20,000 jokes for various comics. Allen also wrote for Candid Camera and appeared in several episodes.
Allen wrote jokes for the Buddy Hackett sitcom Stanley and The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom, and in 1958 he co-wrote a few Sid Caesar specials with Larry Gelbart. Composer Mary Rodgers said he was gaining a reputation. When given an assignment for a show, he would leave and come back the next day with "reams of paper", according to producer Max Liebman. Similarly, after he wrote for Bob Hope, Hope called him "half a genius". Dick Cavett said: "He can go to a typewriter after breakfast and sit there until the sun sets and his head is pounding, interrupting work only for coffee and a brief walk, and then spend the whole evening working." Allen once estimated that to prepare for a 30-minute show, he spent six months of intensive writing. He enjoyed writing, despite the work: "Nothing makes me happier than to tear open a ream of paper. And I can't wait to fill it!"
Allen wrote short stories and cartoon captions in the tradition of New Yorker humorists S. J. Perelman, George S. Kaufman, Robert Benchley, and Max Shulman, whose material he modernized. His collections of short pieces include Getting Even, Without Feathers, Side Effects, and Mere Anarchy. In 2010, Allen released an audiobook, The Woody Allen Collection, in which he read 73 selections. He was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album.
From 1960 to 1969, Allen performed as a comedian in Greenwich Village, including The Bitter End and Cafe Au Go Go, alongside Lenny Bruce, the team of Mike Nichols and Elaine May, Joan Rivers, George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Dick Cavett, Bill Cosby and Mort Sahl (his personal favorite), as well as Bob Dylan and Barbra Streisand. Comedian Milton Berle claims to have suggested to Allen to go into standup comedy and even introduced him at the Village Vanguard. Comedy historian Gerald Nachman writes, "He helped turn it into biting, brutally honest satirical commentary on the cultural and psychological tenor of the times."