50 Fun Facts About Woody Allen

What was Woody Allen's birth name?

He began calling himself Woody in high school and took the name from the bandleader Woody Herman.

In which New York City borough was Allen born, at Mount Eden Hospital?

He was raised in Brooklyn's Midwood neighbourhood, and unlike his persona was more interested in baseball than school and picked first for teams.

How many Academy Awards did Annie Hall win, including Best Picture and Best Actress for Diane Keaton?

It was nominated for the Big Five and beat Star Wars for the top prize; Allen lost Best Actor but won for directing and writing.

How many Academy Awards for Best Original Screenplay has Allen won, a record?

He also holds the record for nominations in the category, with 16; his fourth Oscar is the directing prize of 1978.

What was the working title Allen suggested for Annie Hall, a term for the inability to feel pleasure?

Co-writer Marshall Brickman offered It Had to Be Jew, Rollercoaster Named Desire and Me and My Goy instead.

What is the name of Allen's character in Annie Hall, a comic picking over a failed relationship?

'Alvy' was one of Allen's own childhood nicknames and his birthday appears on a blackboard in the film.

Which media theorist steps out from behind a poster in Annie Hall to rebuke a man in a cinema queue?

The couple are queueing for The Sorrow and the Pity, and Alvy conjures the theorist to say the man knows nothing of his work.

Which cinematographer, called 'a technical wizard' by Allen, shot Annie Hall?

Allen called the film 'the first step toward maturity' in his filmmaking; the pairing struck many, Keaton included, as odd.

Which composer's music, including Rhapsody in Blue, inspired and scores Manhattan (1979)?

It was Allen's first film in black-and-white and was shot in 2.35:1 widescreen; he has called it a mix of his previous two films.

Which actress plays Tracy, the 17-year-old dating Allen's twice-divorced character in Manhattan?

Streep plays his ex-wife and Keaton the mistress of his best friend, played by Michael Murphy.

In which 1983 mockumentary does Allen play a man who takes on the traits of those around him?

Set in the 1920s, it earned Oscar nominations for cinematography and costume design and inspired the series Documentary Now!

Who plays the Depression-era waitress in The Purple Rose of Cairo whose life Jeff Daniels's character walks into?

The idea inverts Buster Keaton's Sherlock Junior, in which a projectionist walks into a film; it won the BAFTA for Best Film.

Which two actors won Supporting Oscars for Allen's 1986 Thanksgiving-framed family drama?

The film also won Allen his second screenplay Oscar and was for years his biggest box-office hit.

What is the profession of Judah Rosenthal, Martin Landau's character in Crimes and Misdemeanors?

Allen plays the second lead, small-time documentary maker Clifford Stern; Landau was Oscar-nominated.

In which city is Allen's 2005 thriller Match Point set?

Allen had complained that US studios only wanted $100 million pictures; the film starred Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Scarlett Johansson.

Who won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Vicky Cristina Barcelona?

The film premiered at Cannes in 2008 and won the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy.

Which actor plays Gil Pender, the screenwriter transported to the 1920s each night in Midnight in Paris?

The cast included Carla Bruni, then First Lady of France; the film became Allen's highest-grossing in North America at $56.3 million.

Which of Allen's films did Midnight in Paris overtake as his highest-grossing in North America?

The 1986 film had grossed $40 million; Midnight in Paris made $56.3 million.

Who won the Best Actress Oscar for playing a fallen Manhattan socialite in Blue Jasmine (2013)?

She said she thought about the Madoff scandal while preparing; Sally Hawkins played her working-class sister in San Francisco.

In Sleeper (1973), Allen's health-food store owner wakes from cryogenic freezing in which year?

All that survives of the assassinated national Leader is his nose; it was the first of four scripts Allen wrote with Marshall Brickman.

In Bananas (1971), Allen plays Fielding Mellish, a bumbling New Yorker caught up in what?

Louise Lasser, then his wife, played his romantic interest; Allen said with a broad comedy 'if they're not laughing, you're dead'.

What was Allen's directorial debut, a 1966 redubbing of a Japanese spy film?

What's New Pussycat? (1965) was his first produced screenplay but was directed by Clive Donner.

In Take the Money and Run (1969), Allen plays which incompetent thief?

Vincent Canby called it 'a feature-length, two-reel comedy'; Bill Hader later cited it as an inspiration for Documentary Now!

Which 1975 Allen film starring Diane Keaton spoofs Russian literature in the Napoleonic era?

Vincent Canby called it Allen's 'grandest work'; the next year Allen starred in Martin Ritt's blacklist drama The Front.

For which TV star did the young Allen write alongside Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner and Neil Simon?

By then he was earning $1,500 a week; he had started at $25 a week writing for humorist Herb Shriner.

At which Manhattan nightclub did Allen make his professional stage debut as a stand-up in October 1960?

Shelley Berman introduced him as a young TV writer performing his own material; Dick Cavett recalled the audience mostly ignoring him.

Which comedian did Allen name as his personal favourite among his Greenwich Village contemporaries?

He said Sahl 'came along with a whole new style of humor, opening up vistas for people like me'.

How many times did Allen sit in The Tonight Show host's chair over nine years of guest spots?

He first appeared with Johnny Carson on 1 November 1963 and hosted one of his last shows in 1971 with Bob Hope as guest.

What was Allen's first big Broadway success, which opened in 1966 and ran for 598 performances?

He remade it for television in 1994 with Michael J. Fox and Mayim Bialik.

In which 1969 Broadway show did Diane Keaton first act opposite Allen, earning a Tony nomination?

She said she 'fell in love with him right away' and went on to make eight of his films.

Which instrument has Woody Allen played for decades with his New Orleans Jazz Band?

The band long held Monday nights at Manhattan's Carlyle Hotel; he plays songs by Sidney Bechet, his favourite musician, and Louis Armstrong.

Which 1997 documentary by Barbara Kopple follows Allen's band on a European tour?

It also chronicles his relationship with Soon-Yi Previn; American Blues is a jazz film he has long wanted to make but says would cost too much.

How many films did Allen make with the partner he lived and worked with from 1980 to 1992?

The first was A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy, in which she took a role meant for Diane Keaton, who was shooting Reds.

How many times has Allen been married?

To Harlene Rosen (1956-59), Louise Lasser (1966-70) and Soon-Yi Previn since 1997.

What nickname did Allen give his first wife, Harlene Rosen, in his stand-up act, prompting a defamation suit?

He was 20 and she 17 when they married in 1956; they divorced in 1959.

In which Italian city did Allen marry Soon-Yi Previn in December 1997?

They live in Carnegie Hill on the Upper East Side and have two adopted daughters.

What is the title of Allen's 2020 memoir?

The other titles are collections of his humour pieces; Dylan and Ronan Farrow criticised the memoir's publication.

What was Allen's 2016 Amazon series, which he predicted would be 'a cosmic embarrassment', called?

It was the first television show he had ever developed; he said the head of Amazon Studios would 'regret this'.

What is notable about Woody Allen's 50th feature, Coup de Chance (2023)?

It premiered at the Venice Film Festival; he said at the time he was content having made 50 films and might stop there.

Which of Allen's 1994 films became a 2014 stage musical, earning him a Tony nod for Best Book?

Susan Stroman directed and choreographed it and Zach Braff starred; it drew six Tony nominations.

Which 1980 Allen film was based on Fellini's 8½ and Bergman's Wild Strawberries?

Allen has named Bergman and Ernst Lubitsch among his filmmaking influences, and Bob Hope and Groucho Marx among his comic ones.

Which Bergman film did Allen adapt into his 1982 comedy about three couples in the country?

His Shadows and Fog is a black-and-white homage to German expressionism set to Kurt Weill.

Who directed The Front (1976), in which Woody Allen fronts for blacklisted writers opposite Zero Mostel?

Whatever Works, filmed in 2008, was written in the 1970s with its lead role intended for Mostel, who died in 1977.

How many of Allen's films have been inducted into the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress?

His other honours include an Honorary Palme d'Or in 2002 and the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2014.

Which 1995 Allen comedy steeped in Greek drama won Mira Sorvino a Supporting Actress Oscar?

Allen followed it with the musical Everyone Says I Love You, whose dance numbers nod to Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

Allen voiced the ant Z in which 1998 film, the first animated feature from DreamWorks?

The film featured many actors he had worked with, and his character was similar to his earlier live-action roles.

The Purple Rose of Cairo's screen-crossing idea was inspired by which Buster Keaton film?

In Keaton's 1924 film a projectionist walks into a movie; Allen reversed the idea with Jeff Daniels stepping out to meet Mia Farrow's waitress.

Which comedian stars in Whatever Works (2009), in a role Allen had written in the 1970s for Zero Mostel?

Mostel died the year Annie Hall came out, and the script sat unused for three decades.

Allen's Shadows and Fog, a black-and-white homage to German expressionism, uses whose music?

It came between Alice and the Oscar-nominated Husbands and Wives in a prolific run of early-1990s films.

Allen's Rifkin's Festival premiered in September 2020 at which film festival?

The cast included Christoph Waltz, Elena Anaya, Louis Garrel and Wallace Shawn; filming had wrapped in October 2019.