Woody Allen (1935- ), American comedian, film director, actor, and writer whose on-screen alter ego of the fast-talking, nebbish, neurotic, death-obsessed New York Jewish male became one of the most popular and enduring comic creations of the 20th century.

Allen Stewart Konigsberg was born on December 1, 1935, in Brooklyn, New York, and began writing quips for newspaper columnists at the age of 15, using the name Woody Allen. He then wrote for radio and television performers and, after leaving school, joined the staff of television comedian Sid Caesar. While working as a nightclub comedian (1961-1964), he was spotted by a film producer who hired him to write and appear in What’s New, Pussycat? (1965). Soon after, in 1966, came his first film as a director, What’s Up, Tiger Lily?, marking the beginning of a long association with United Artists. Take the Money and Run (1969), Bananas (1971), and Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask) (1972) followed. All featured Allen in his characteristic role of the befuddled underachiever.

He turned to more serio-comic themes with Love and Death (1975) and Annie Hall (1977), the latter winning Academy Awards (Oscars) for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Actress, although Allen famously snubbed the Oscar ceremony because it coincided with his weekly appearance playing jazz clarinet at Michael's Pub in New York. Both films starred Diane Keaton, who paired with Allen in many of his films.

Another film, Interiors (1978), was a sombre psychological drama, while the austere Stardust Memories (1980) was an obviously autobiographical work. Around this time he also made what is regarded by many critics as his greatest film, Manhattan (1979), a deft comedy about the romantic anxieties of a New York television comedy-writer, famed for its inspired opening sequence set to Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin and luminous black and white photography by Gordon Willis. Allen’s 1982 film, A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy, the first of a new association with Orion Pictures, was also the first of many to feature his future partner, Mia Farrow.

Subsequent films included the ingenious spoof newsreel documentary Zelig (1983); the sophisticated Chekhovian family saga Hannah and Her Sisters (1986); Another Woman (1988), a reflective piece about a middle-aged female academic, played with great subtlety by Gena Rowlands; Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), an ambitious ensemble drama combining comedy and higher moral themes, which vies with Manhattan as his finest work; the fly-on-the-wall dissection of married life Husbands and Wives (1992); the Jazz Age mob-comedy Bullets Over Broadway (1994); and the musical Everyone Says I Love You (1996).

After an acrimonious separation from Farrow in 1992 over his affair with her adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn (whom he later married), Allen made Deconstructing Harry (1997) and Celebrity (1998), two films that were notably more cynical in tone to his previous work. As he approached and passed 70, he continued to make films at a steady rate of one a year, although the critical consensus was that his creative forces were waning. With the exception of Match Point (2005), Allen’s first film to be made in Britain and his biggest commercial success in two decades, these were generally shunned by American audiences. Nevertheless, Allen continued to retain a loyal fanbase in Europe, a situation that he drew on for the ending of his 2002 comedy Hollywood Ending, in which the washed-up director Val Waxman's comeback film turns out to be a disaster in his native US but is adored by the French.

Early in his career, Allen wrote and starred in the Broadway hit plays Don’t Drink the Water (1966; film, 1969) and Play It Again, Sam (1969; film, 1972), and in 2003 he made a belated debut as a theatre director with the off-Broadway production Writer’s Block. The books Getting Even (1971) and Without Feathers (1976) are collections of short humorous works. In 1997 Allen was the subject of the documentary Wild Man Blues, which followed him on a European tour with his New Orleans Jazz Band.