Claim: Woody Allen is a comedian.

Heywood `` Woody '' Allen -LRB- born Allan Stewart Konigsberg ; December 1 , 1935 -RRB- is an American director , writer , actor , comedian , playwright , and musician whose career spans more than six decades .   He worked as a comedy writer in the 1950s , writing jokes and scripts for television and publishing several books of short humor pieces . In the early 1960s , Allen began performing as a stand-up comedian , emphasizing monologues rather than traditional jokes . As a comedian , he developed the persona of an insecure , intellectual , fretful nebbish , which he maintains is quite different from his real-life personality . In 2004 , Comedy Central ranked Allen in fourth place on a list of the 100 greatest stand-up comedians , while a UK survey ranked Allen as the third greatest comedian .   By the mid-1960s Allen was writing and directing films , first specializing in slapstick comedies before moving into dramatic material influenced by European art cinema during the 1970s , and alternating between comedies and dramas to the present . He is often identified as part of the New Hollywood wave of filmmakers of the mid-1960s to late 1970s . Allen often stars in his films , typically in the persona he developed as a standup . Some of the best-known of his over 40 films are Annie Hall -LRB- 1977 -RRB- , Manhattan -LRB- 1979 -RRB- , and Hannah and Her Sisters -LRB- 1986 -RRB- . In 2007 he said Stardust Memories -LRB- 1980 -RRB- , The Purple Rose of Cairo -LRB- 1985 -RRB- , and Match Point -LRB- 2005 -RRB- were his best films . Critic Roger Ebert described Allen as `` a treasure of the cinema '' .   Allen won four Academy Awards : three for Best Original Screenplay and one for Best Director -LRB- Annie Hall -RRB- . He also won nine British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards . His screenplay for Annie Hall was named the funniest screenplay by the Writers Guild of America in its list of the `` 101 Funniest Screenplays . '' In 2011 , PBS televised the film biography Woody Allen : A Documentary on the American Masters TV series .