page_title: Alan Alda
section_title: Early acting
hierarchical_section_title: Alan Alda / Career / Early acting
caption_attribution_description: Photo of Alan Alda.
context_page_description: Alan Alda is an American actor, director, screenwriter, comedian, and author. A six-time Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award winner, he played Hawkeye Pierce in the war television series M*A*S*H. He has had recurring roles on television programs such as The West Wing, and 30 Rock, and has appeared in films such as Same Time, Next Year, The Four Seasons, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Flirting with Disaster, Bridge of Spies, and Marriage Story. In 2004, Alda was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in The Aviator. He is also known as Uncle Pete in Louis C.K.'s Peabody Award–winning tragicomedy web series Horace and Pete. Alda has also received three Tony Award nominations for his performances in The Apple Tree, Jake's Women, and Glengarry Glen Ross. In 2019, Alda received the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award.
context_section_description: Alda began his career in the 1950s, as a member of the Compass Players, an improvisational, comedy revue directed by Paul Sills. He joined the acting company at the Cleveland Play House during the 1958–1959 season as part of a grant from the Ford Foundation, appearing in productions such as To Dorothy a Son, Heaven Come Wednesday, Monique, and Job. In 1958 Alda appeared as Carlyle Thompson III on The Phil Silvers Show in the episode titled "Bilko the Art Lover". In the November 1964 world premiere at the ANTA Playhouse of the stage version of The Owl and The Pussycat, he played Felix the "Owl" opposite the "Pussycat" which was played by actress/singer Diana Sands.  He continued to play Felix the "Owl" for the 1964-65 Broadway season. In 1966, he starred in the musical The Apple Tree on Broadway, also starring Barbara Harris; he was nominated for the Tony Award as Best Actor in a Musical for that role.
  Alda said he became a Mainer in 1957 when he played at the Kennebunkport Playhouse.
  Alda was part of the cast, along with David Frost, Henry Morgan and Buck Henry, of the American television version of That Was The Week That Was, which ran as a series from January 10, 1964 to May 1965. He made his Hollywood acting debut as a supporting player in Gone are the Days! – a film version of the Broadway play Purlie Victorious, which co-starred Ruby Dee and her husband, Ossie Davis. Other film roles followed, such as his portrayal of author, humorist, and actor George Plimpton in the film Paper Lion (1968), as well as The Extraordinary Seaman (1969), and the occult-murder-suspense thriller The Mephisto Waltz, with actresses Jacqueline Bisset and Barbara Parkins. During this time, Alda frequently appeared as a panelist on the 1968 revival of What's My Line?. He also appeared as a panelist on I've Got a Secret during its 1972 syndication revival.
caption: Alan Alda c. 1960s
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