Richard Benjamin

Richard Samuel Benjamin (born May 22, 1938) is an American actor and film director. He has starred in a number of well-known film productions, including Goodbye, Columbus (1969), based on the novella by Philip Roth; Catch-22 (1970), from the Joseph Heller best-seller; Westworld (1973), a science-fiction thriller by Michael Crichton; and The Sunshine Boys (1975), written by Neil Simon. After directing for television, Benjamin's first feature as director was the 1982 comedy My Favorite Year, for which star Peter O'Toole was nominated for an Academy award. His other films as director include City Heat (1984), starring Burt Reynolds and Clint Eastwood, Made in America with Whoopi Goldberg and The Money Pit (1986) with Tom Hanks. 2Life and acting career Benjamin was born in New York City, the son of Samuel Roger Benjamin (1910–1997), a garment industry worker, and Chelsea Angelina (née Roberts) Benjamin (1913–1959), a homemaker. His family was Jewish. He attended the High School of Performing Arts and graduated from Northwestern University, where he was involved in many plays and studied in the Northwestern theater school. He married actress Paula Prentiss on October 26, 1961; they have two children. They appeared together in short-lived television series He & She (1967–68) and the movie version of Catch-22 (1970), as well as the Australian film No Room to Run (1976) and the 1981 horror spoof Saturday the 14th. In 1978, he starred in the ambitious but short-lived television series Quar