Oscar winner Alan Arkin started his career with the acclaimed Second City Comedy troupe in Chicago. He would make his Broadway debut with that group in the fall of 1961. Two years later he would rise to theatrical fame in the play “Enter Laughing” as a young man who aspires to be an actor despite his families objections. He would win the Tony Award in 1963 as Best Featured Actor in a Play for that role. He would score another Broadway triumph the following year with the highly praised and popular play “Luv.”
He would then go onto become one of the rare people who received an Oscar nomination for their first film when he starred in the film “The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming.” Arkin would receive three more Oscar nominations and finally win the Oscar nearly 35 years after his film debut for the film “Little Miss Sunshine.” Arkin has had a long and varied career which also included directing on the Broadway stage. His biggest Broadway directing success would be with Neil Simon‘s “The Sunshine Boys.” The popular story of the reunion of two vaudevillians would later be made into a film starring Walter Matthau that would win George Burns the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.
He recently starred in the Netflix comedy “The Kominsky Method,” earning Emmy recognition. Arkin died in 2023.
Tour our photo gallery above with his 15 greatest film performances, ranked worst to best. Our list includes the films above plus “The In-Laws,” “Argo,” “Wait Until Dark” and more.
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15. POPI (1969)
Image Credit: Courtesy of United Artists Director: Arthur Hiller. Writer: Tina Pine, Lester Pine. Starring Rita Moreno, Louis Zorich, Antonia Rey.
Arkin received a Golden Globe nomination as Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama (even though the film has strong comedic elements) for this story of a Puerto Rican single father who stages a plan to pretend his sons are escapees from Cuba since he sees how those escapees from communist Cuba are treated as heroes in his poverty stricken community.
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14. LAST OF THE RED HOT LOVERS (1972)
Image Credit: Courtesy of Paramount Pictures Director: Gene Saks. Writer: Neil Simon. Starring Sally Kellerman, Paula Prentiss, Renee Taylor.
Neil Simon was on a run in the late sixties and early seventies turning out a hit play practically every year. This film version of one of his hits casts Arkin as a middle aged restaurant owner who decides to have an extramarital affair. His plans are thwarted by three different women all of whom bring there own neurosis to the meeting which prevent any affair from actually taking place.
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13. GROSSE POINTE BLANK (1997)
Image Credit: Moviestore Collection/REX/Shutterstock Director: George Armitage Writer: Tom Jankiewicz,D.V. DeVincent, Steve Pink, John Cusack. Starring John Cusack, Minnie Driver, Dan Aykroyd.
This off beat comedy stars John Cusack as a professional hit man who becomes depressed by the competition in his profession. He obtains a contract to kill someone in his hometown where his ten year high school reunion is taking place. Arkin plays Cusack’s therapist who has grown increasingly frustrated in advising his unusual client.
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12. SLUMS OF BEVERLY HILLS (1998)
Image Credit: Lorey Sebastian/Fox Searchlight/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director and writer: Tamara Jenkins. Starring Natasha Lyone, Marisa Tomei, Jessica Walter.
This comedy casts Arkin as a single father struggling to find cheap apartments within the Beverly Hills city limit so that his children can attend the high quality schools the district offers. The family moves from apartment to apartment as Arkin strives to keep his kids in the high quality area.
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11. EDWARD SCISSORHANDS (1990)
Image Credit: 20th Century Fox/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director: Tim Burton. Writer: Caroline Thompson. Starring Johnny Depp, Winona Ryder, Diane Wiest.
This magical fantasy film established Johnny Depp as a movie star and further cemented Tim Burton’s reputation as a visionary filmmaker. Depp plays an artificial human whose maker dies before he can complete the character’s hands. Therefore he is stuck with scissors where his hands should be. He is discovered living alone by a friendly Avon lady (Wiest) who takes him into her home. Arkin plays Wiest’s husband in the film.
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10. CATCH-22 (1970)
Image Credit: Moviestore/REX/Shutterstock Director: Mike Nichols. Writer: Buck Henry. Starring Martin Balsam, Richard Benjamin, Art Garfunkel.
The novel “Catch-22” was a bit of a sensation upon its release so expectations where high for this film with both Arkin and director Mike Nichols coming off enormous successes in prior years. The film was greeted with largely negative reviews but has since grown in popularity as time has progressed. The story chronicles the life of an Air Force captain during WWII and his frustrations with the system that seems designed to thwart anything going right.
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9. THE SEVEN PERCENT SOLUTION (1976)
Image Credit: Universal/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director: Herbert Ross. Writer: Nicholas Meyer. Starring Nicol Williamson, Robert Duvall, Vanessa Redgrave.
This well crafted film brings one of fictions greatest characters into contact with one of the great thinkers of the time. Arkin plays Sigmund Freud the famed analyst and neurologist to whom Dr. Watson (Robert Duvall) brings his friend Sherlock Holmes (Nicol Williamson) whom Watson believes is suffering paranoid delusions due to his addiction to cocaine.
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8. GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS (1992)
Image Credit: ITV/REX/Shutterstock Director: James Foley. Writer: David Mamet. Starring Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Alec Baldwin.
The Pulitzer Prize winning play by David Mamet is set among the sad world of a group of real estate salesman who are placed under enormous pressure to sell land to people who really can’t afford it. The group are placed under even more pressure when they are told that all but the top two salesmen will be fired. Al Pacino received a Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for the film and would go on to do the play on Broadway later but that time playing the role played by Jack Lemmon in the film.
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7. THIRTEEN CONVERSATIONS ABOUT ONE THING (2001)
Image Credit: Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics Director: Jill Sprecher. Writers: Jill and Karen Sprecher. Starring Matthew McConaughey, Amy Irving, John Turturro.
Arkin was nominated for a slew of critics circle awards and won the Boston Society of Film Critics prize as Best Supporting Actor for this episodic film about various people struggling to make their lives work. Arkin plays the father of a drug addicted son who takes out his stress on an employee whose cheerfulness grates on Arkin’s nerves.
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6. ARGO (2012)
Image Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director: Ben AFfleck. Writer: Chris Terrio. Starring Ben Affleck, Bryan Cranston, John Goodman.
“Argo” won three Oscars including Best Picture and earned a Supporting Actor nomination for Arkin. The film will go down as one of the strangest Oscar wins and some argue one of the least deserving Best Picture winners. The strangeness started when Ben Affleck was not nominated for Best Director. The omission seemed to outrage some people and it became a sort of revenge vote to award Affleck a Best Picture Oscar as the film’s producer even though he had been snubbed as a director. The film is set during the Iran hostage crisis where employees of the American embassy were held captive. A plan is launched to rescue them involving a fake Hollywood film being made there. Arkin plays a producer of the pretend film.
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5. THE IN-LAWS (1979)
Image Credit: Warner Bros/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director: Arthur Hiller. Writer: Andrew Bergman. Starring Peter Falk, Richard Libertini, Nancy Dussault.
“The In-Laws” is a cult favorite for its great comedic pairing of Peter Falk and Alan Arkin as a father’s whose children are marrying. Arkin plays a straight arrow dentist who to his great dismay becomes involved in his in-law’s life as a CIA agent. The film’s most popular sequence is a part where Arkin frantically yells “serpentine, serpentine” as he and Falk try to avoid snipers who are shooting at them.
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4. WAIT UNTIL DARK (1967)
Image Credit: Warner Bros/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director: Terrence Young. Writers: Robert Carrington, Jane-Howard Hammerstein. Starring Audrey Hepburn, Richard Crenna, Efrem Zimbalist Jr.
Based on the popular stage play of the same name “Wait Until Dark” tells the story of a young blind woman trying to adjust to her lose of sight. Her husband inadvertently has accepted a doll filled with heroin and left it in their apartment. A bunch of criminals descend on the house trying to gain access and locate the doll. They play various tricks on the blind woman as they try to determine where the heroin is stashed and how much she knows about it. Arkin gets to show great range as he poses as different men all in attempt to gain information from star Audrey Hepburn.
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3. LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE (2006)
Image Credit: Eric Lee/20th Century Fox/Fox Searchlight/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Directors: James Dayton, Valerie Faris. Writer: Michael Arndt. Starring Toni Collette, Steve Carrell, Greg Kinnear.
Arkin won the Oscar on his third try in a bit of a surprise victory. Most of the Supporting Actor Awards that year where being bestowed on Eddie Murphy for “Dreamgirls” Arkin won the BAFTA though and much like the Olivia Colman/Glenn Close situation of this year the BAFTA win seemed to turn the tide and Arkin was able to ride it to an Oscar victory. Arkin plays the understanding grandfather of a family traveling across country so his granddaughter can compete in a child beauty pageant.
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2. THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING! THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING! (1966)
Image Credit: United Artists/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director: Norman Jewison. Writer: William Rose. Starring Carl Reiner, Eva Marie Saint, Brian Keith.
Arkin received an Oscar nomination as Best Actor and won the Golden Globe Award as Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy for this comedy which also marked his film debut. The film is an antic comedy involving a Russian submarine that accidentally comes ashore in a summer vacation era. Set during the height of Cold War paranoia the film features an all-star cast of gifted comedians. Arkin plays the head of the Russian landing party that comes ashore to seek help from the panicked residents.
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1. THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER (1968)
Image Credit: Warner Bros/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director: Robert Ellis Miller. Writer: Thomas C. Ryan. Starring Sondra Locke, Chuck McCann, Cicely Tyson.
Two years later Arkin would again be nominated as Best Actor this time in a decidedly non-comic role as a deaf mute who moves to a small town where he only has one friend. Based on the acclaimed novel by Carson McCullers the film depicts the touching relationship Arkin’s character has with the lonely teenage daughter of his landlady played by fellow Oscar nominee Sondra Locke. Arkin gives a masterfully subtle and still performance which was a great achievement since he was mostly known at this point for playing overtly comic roles.
