Actors - Albert Brooks

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	Actors - Albert Brooks

Albert Brooks (born July 22, 1947) is a American actor, comedian and director.

Biography

Early life

Brooks was born Albert Lawrence Einstein in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California to a Jewish American family. His father, Harry Einstein, was a comedian who performed on Eddie Cantor's radio program and was known as Parkyarkarkus. His mother was actress Thelma Leeds (born Thelma Goodman). His brother is Super Dave Osborne.

Brooks grew up among showbusiness royalty in southern California, attending high school with Richard Dreyfuss and Rob Reiner.

Early career

Brooks attended Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh, but dropped out after one year to focus on his comedy career. He changed his surname from Einstein (to avoid confusion with the famous scientist) and began a stand-up comedy career that quickly made him a regular on variety and talk shows during the late 1960s and early 1970s. His onstage persona, that of an egotistical, nervous comic, influenced other comedians, including Steve Martin, Martin Mull and Andy Kaufman.

After two successful comedy albums, Comedy Minus One (1974) and the Grammy Award-nominated A Star is Bought (1975), Brooks left the standup circuit to try his hand as a filmmaker; his first film, The Famous Comedians School, was a satiric short which appeared on PBS and was an early example of the mockumentary sub-genre. In 1975, he directed six short films for the first season of NBC's Saturday Night Live
, and in 1976 appeared in his first mainstream film role, in Scorsese's landmark Taxi Driver
(Scorsese allowed Brooks to improvise much of his dialogue). Many of these roles reflected Brooks's decision to move to Los Angeles to get into the film business.

Brooks directed his first feature film, Real Life, in 1979. The film, in which Brooks obnoxiously films a typical suburban family in an effort to win both an Oscar and a Nobel Prize, was a sendup of PBS's An American Family documentary. Brooks also made a brief cameo in the film Private Benjamin
(1980), starring Goldie Hawn.

1980s-1990s

Through the 1980s and 1990s, Brooks co-wrote (with longtime collaborator Monica Johnson), directed and starred in a series of moderately-successful comedies, playing variants on his standard neurotic and self-obsessed character. These include 1981's Modern Romance
, where Brooks played a film editor desperate to win back his ex-girlfriend (Kathryn Harrold). The film received a limited release and ultimately grossed under $3 million domestically, but was well received by critics, with one reviewer commenting that the film was "not Brooks at his best, but still amusing". His best-received film, Lost in America
(1985), featured Brooks and Julie Hagerty as a couple who leave their yuppie lifestyle, drop out of society and live in a motor home, only to find the disadvantages of poverty.

Brooks's Defending Your Life
(1991) placed his lead character in the afterlife, put on trial to justify his human failings and to determine his cosmic fate. Critics responded to the offbeat premise and the surprising chemistry between Brooks and Meryl Streep as his post-death love interest. His later efforts did not find large audiences, but still retained Brooks's touch as a filmmaker. He garnered positive reviews for Mother
(1996), which starred Brooks as a middle-aged writer moving back home to resolve his tensions with his mother (Debbie Reynolds). 1999's The Muse featured Brooks as a down-and-out Hollywood screenwriter using the services of an authentic muse (Sharon Stone) for inspiration.

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