Alan Alda

Alan Alda (born Alphonso Joseph D'Abruzzo; January 28, 1936) is an American actor, director, screenwriter, and author. A six-time Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award winner, he is widely known for his roles as Captain Hawkeye Pierce in the TV series M*A*S*H (1972–1983) and Arnold Vinick in The West Wing (2004–2006). He has also appeared in many feature films, most notably in Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) as pretentious television producer Lester and in The Aviator (2004) as U.S. Senator Owen Brewster, the latter of which saw Alda nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. For 14 years, he served as the host of Scientific American Frontiers, a television show that explored cutting-edge advances in science and technology. He is currently a visiting professor at Stony Brook University and a founder and member of the advisory board of the university's Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science and the Future of Life Institute. He serves on the board of the World Science Festival and is a judge for Math-O-Vision. 2Family and early life Alda was born Alphonso Joseph D'Abruzzo on January 28, 1936, in the Bronx, New York City, and had a peripatetic childhood, as his parents traveled around the United States in support of his father's job as a performer in burlesque theatres. His father, Robert Alda (born Alphonso Giuseppe Giovanni Roberto D'Abruzzo), was an actor and singer, and his mother, Joan Browne, was a homemaker and former beauty-pageant winner. His father was of Italian descent and his mother was of Irish ancestry. His adopted surname, "Alda", is a portmanteau of ALphonso and D'Abruzz