Albert Lawrence Brooks is an American actor, voice actor, writer, comedian, and director.
He received an Academy Award nomination in 1987 for his role in Broadcast News. His voice
acting credits include Marlin the clownfish in Finding Nemo, and recurring guest voices
for the animated television series The Simpsons, including Russ Cargill in The Simpsons Movie.
Additionally, he has written, directed and starred in several comedy films such as Modern
Romance, Lost in America and Defending Your Life and is the author of the satire 2030:
The Real Story of What Happens to America.
Early life Brooks was born in Beverly Hills, California,
the son of Thelma Leeds, a singer and actress, and Harry Einstein, a radio comedian who performed
on Eddie Cantor's radio program and was known as Parkyakarkus. His brothers are comedic
actor Bob Einstein, better known by a character he created named "Super Dave Osborne," and
Cliff Einstein, a partner and longtime chief creative officer at Los Angeles advertising
agency Dailey & Associates. His half-brother was Charles Einstein, a writer for such television
programs as Playhouse 90 and Lou Grant. Brooks is Jewish; his grandparents emigrated from
Austria and Russia. He grew up among show business families in southern California,
attending Beverly Hills High School with Richard Dreyfuss and Rob Reiner. By 19, he had changed
and begun to make his own name—Albert Brooks—on a Steve Allen TV show.
Career Early career
Brooks attended Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, but dropped out after one year to focus on
his comedy career. He changed his surname from Einstein and began a comedy career that
quickly made him a regular on variety and talk shows during the late 1960s and early
1970s. Brooks led a new generation of self-reflective baby-boomer comics appearing on NBC's The
Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. His onstage persona, that of an egotistical, narcissistic,
nervous comic, an ironic showbiz insider who punctured himself before an audience by disassembling
his mastery of comedic stagecraft, influenced other '70s post-modern comedians, including
Steve Martin, Martin Mull and Andy Kaufman. After two successful comedy albums, Comedy
Minus One and the Grammy Award-nominated A Star Is Bought, Brooks left the stand-up circuit
to try his hand as a filmmaker; his first film, The Famous Comedians School, was a satiric
short that 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:
October 11, 1975 episode – "The Impossible Truth"
October 18, 1975 episode – failed Candid Camera stunts and home movies
October 25, 1975 episode – heart surgery November 8, 1975 episode – upcoming season
December 13, 1975 episode – sick January 9, 1976 episode – audience test
screening In 1976 he appeared in his first mainstream
film role, in Martin Scorsese's landmark Taxi Driver; Scorsese allowed Brooks to improvise
much of his dialogue. The role reflected Brooks's decision to move to Los Angeles to enter the
film business. In an interview, Brooks mentioned a conversation he'd had with Taxi Driver screenwriter
Paul Schrader, in which Schrader said that Brooks's character was the only one in the
movie that he could not "understand" – a remark that Brooks found amusing, as the movie's
antihero was a psychotic loner. 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.
It has also been viewed as foretelling the future emergence of reality television. Brooks
also made a cameo appearance in the film Private Benjamin, starring Goldie Hawn.
1980s–1990s Through the 1980s and 1990s, Brooks co-wrote,
directed and starred in a series of well-received 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. 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, featured Brooks and Julie Hagerty as a couple who leave
their yuppie lifestyle and drop out of society to live in a motor home as they have always
dreamed of doing. They meet comic disappointment. Brooks's Defending Your Life placed his lead
character in the afterlife, put on trial to justify his human fears and thus 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, which starred Brooks as a middle-aged writer moving back home to resolve
tensions between himself and his mother. 1999's The Muse featured Brooks as a down-and-out
Hollywood screenwriter using the services of an authentic muse for inspiration. In an
interview with Brooks with regards to The Muse, Gavin Smith wrote, "Brooks's distinctive
filmmaking style is remarkably discreet and unemphatic; he has a light, deft touch, with
a classical precision and economy, shooting and cutting his scenes in smooth, seamless
successions of medium shots, with clean, high-key lighting."
Brooks has appeared as a guest voice on The Simpsons five times during its run, and is
described as the best guest star in the show's history by IGN, particularly for his role
as supervillain Hank Scorpio in the episode "You Only Move Twice".
Brooks also acted in other writers' and directors' films during the 1980s and 1990s. He had a
cameo in the opening scene of Twilight Zone: The Movie, playing a driver whose passenger
has a shocking secret. In James L. Brooks's hit Broadcast News, Albert Brooks was nominated
for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor as an insecure, supremely ethical network
TV reporter, who offers the rhetorical question, "Wouldn't this be a great world if insecurity
and desperation made us more attractive?" He also won positive notices for his role
in 1998's Out of Sight, playing an untrustworthy banker and ex-convict.
2000s Brooks received positive reviews for his portrayal
of a dying retail store owner who befriends disillusioned teen Leelee Sobieski in My First
Mister. Brooks continued his voiceover work in Disney and Pixar's Finding Nemo, as the
voice of "Marlin", one of the film's protagonists; Nemo is Brooks's largest grossing film to
date. In 2005, his film Looking for Comedy in the
Muslim World was dropped by Sony Pictures due to their desire to change the title. Warner
Independent Pictures purchased the film and gave it a limited release in January 2006;
the film received mixed reviews and a low box office gross. The movie goes back to the
days of Brooks's Real Life, as Brooks once again plays himself, a filmmaker commissioned
by the U.S. government to see what makes the Muslim people laugh, thus sending him on a
tour of India and Pakistan. In 2006 he appeared in the documentary film
Wanderlust as David Howard from "Lost in America". The documentary included many other well known
people. In 2007, he continued his long term collaboration with The Simpsons by voicing
Russ Cargill, the central antagonist of The Simpsons Movie.
He has played Lenny Botwin, Nancy Botwin's estranged father-in-law, on Showtime's television
series Weeds. St. Martin's Press published his first novel, 2030: The Real Story of What
Happens to America, on May 10, 2011. In 2011, Brooks costarred as a vicious gangster
heavy and the main antagonist in the motion picture Drive, alongside Ryan Gosling and
Carey Mulligan, a role that has been given much critical praise and positive reviews,
with several critics proclaiming Brooks' performance as one of the film's best aspects. After receiving
awards and nominations from several film festivals and critic groups, but not an Academy Award
nomination, Brooks responded humorously on Twitter, "And to the Academy: ‘You don't
like me. You really don't like me’." Personal life
In 1997, Brooks married Kimberly Shlain, then a 31-year old website designer. Kimberly's
father was surgeon and writer Leonard Shlain. The couple have two children, Jacob Eli and
Claire Elizabeth. He resides in Santa Monica, CA.
Filmography Films
Television References
External links Official website
Albert Brooks at the Internet Movie Database Albert Brooks at AllMovie
Interview: Albert Brooks: Comedy And Dystopia – On Point.