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Albert Brooks

Albert Brooks has built a career around characters who think they understand themselves—right up until life proves otherwise. Born Albert Lawrence Einstein in Beverly Hills on July 22, 1947, he grew up in a Jewish show-business family and adopted his professional name by the age of 19. After attending Carnegie Institute of Technology for a year, he left to pursue comedy. Brooks emerged on variety and talk shows in the late 1960s and early 1970s, developing a nervous, self-involved stage persona that turned show-business confidence inside out. Following the comedy albums Comedy Minus One and the Grammy-nominated A Star Is Bought, he moved away from stand-up and toward filmmaking. His early mockumentary short The Famous Comedians School aired in 1972, and he later directed six short films for the first season of Saturday Night Live. His first mainstream film role came in Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, where he was allowed to improvise much of his dialogue. As a writer, director and star, Brooks then found his richest territory in anxious people trying to reason their way through romance, ambition and disappointment. Real Life satirized documentary filmmaking years before reality television became a fixture. Modern Romance examined romantic obsession, Lost in America followed a couple whose dream of dropping out quickly unravels, and Defending Your Life turned fear itself into evidence in an afterlife courtroom. Mother and The Muse continued his interest in bruised egos and creative frustration. Brooks has also been sharply effective in other filmmakers’ worlds. His insecure but principled reporter in Broadcast News earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. He later played an untrustworthy banker in Out of Sight and took a darker turn as gangster Bernie Rose in Drive. His voice work shows another side of the same precise comic timing. He voiced Marlin in Finding Nemo and Finding Dory, appeared repeatedly on The Simpsons—including as Hank Scorpio—and voiced Russ Cargill in The Simpsons Movie. Whether playing panic, vanity, decency or menace, Brooks has made self-awareness both a comic weapon and a trap.