Alan Arkin, the wry character actor who demonstrated his versatility in everything from farcical comedy to chilling drama as he received four Academy Award nominations and won an Oscar, has died. He was 89, per the AP. "Our father was a uniquely talented force of nature, both as an artist and a man," Arkin's sons Adam, Matthew, and Anthony said in a statement to People. "A loving husband, father, grand- and great-grandfather, he was adored and will be deeply missed." A member of Chicago's famed Second City comedy troupe, Arkin was an immediate success in movies with the Cold War spoof The Russians Are Coming! the Russians Are Coming! and peaked late in life with his 2007 Oscar win as best supporting actor for the surprise 2006 hit Little Miss Sunshine.
Born in Brooklyn, Arkin and his family moved to Los Angeles when he was 11. His parents found jobs as teachers, but they were fired during the post-World War II Red Scare because they were Communists. "We were dirt poor, so I couldn't afford to go to the movies often," Arkin told the AP in 1998. "But I went whenever I could ... as they were more important than anything in my life." He studied acting in college and married a fellow student, Jeremy Yaffe, with whom he had two sons, Adam and Matthew. After he and Yaffe divorced in 1961, Arkin married actress-writer Barbara Dana and they had a son, Anthony. All three sons became actors; Adam starred in the TV series Chicago Hope. "It was certainly nothing that I pushed them into," Alan Arkin said in 1998. "It made absolutely no difference to me what they did, as long as it allowed them to grow."
Arkin once joked to the AP that the beauty of being a character actor was not having to take his clothes off for a role. He wasn't a sex symbol or superstar, but he was rarely out of work, appearing in more than 100 TV and feature films. His trademarks were likability, relatability, and complete immersion in his roles, no matter how unusual. "Alan's never had an identifiable screen personality because he just disappears into his characters," The Russians Are Coming director Norman Jewison once observed. While still with Second City, Arkin was chosen by Carl Reiner to play the young protagonist in the 1963 Broadway play Enter Laughing, based on Reiner's semi-autobiographical novel. TMZ notes he picked up a Tony for that role. He attracted strong reviews and the notice of Jewison, who was preparing to direct a 1966 comedy about a Russian sub.
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Arkin's rise continued in 1968 with The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, in which he played a sensitive man who couldn't hear or speak, and his career continued to blossom when Mike Nichols, a fellow Second City alumnus, cast him in the starring role in 1970's Catch-22, based on Joseph Heller's novel. Through the years, Arkin turned up in such favorites as Edward Scissorhands, Glengarry Glen Ross, and The Slums of Beverly Hills, in which he and Reiner played brothers. Other recent credits included the 2017 remake Going In Style, as well as in Netflix's The Kominsky Method, with Michael Douglas. He also was the voice of Wild Knuckles in the 2022 animated film Minions: The Rise of Gru. "When I was a young actor people wanted to know if I wanted to be a serious actor or a funny one," Michael McKean tweeted Friday. "I'd answer 'Which kind is Alan Arkin?' and that shut them up."
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