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Alan Arkin died on Thursday at age 89. His manager, Estelle Lasher, confirmed the news to NPR in an email. Publicist Melody Korenbrot said he died in California but did not offer more details.
Arkin sparked up more than 100 films in a career stretching over seven decades. He was the cranky grandpa in 2006’s Little Miss Sunshine, the intruder menacing Audrey Hepburn in 1967’s Wait Until Dark and the movie studio boss in 2012’s Argo.
Arkin knew from childhood that he wanted to be an actor, and he spent a lifetime performing. Born in Brooklyn to Jewish emigrant parents from Russia and Germany, he started taking acting classes at age 10. After dropping out of Bennington College, he toured Europe with a folk band and played the lute in an off-Broadway play. In the early 1960s, Arkin broke out as an improv star at Chicago’s Second City, which led to scores of screen credits.
« When I got to Second City, I was terrible for a couple of months, » he told NPR’s Talk of the Nation in 2011.
