Alan Arkin is an American actor, musician and author, whose long and varied career has included key roles in Catch-22, The In-Laws and Little Miss Sunshine.

Arkin was raised in New York City and Los Angeles. His father, a set designer, was blacklisted as a communist during the Red Scare. Arkin's first on-screen performance, as "Lieutenant Rozanov" in the 1966 film The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming was nominated for an Oscar. He wouldn't win the award, however, until 2007, when he won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his performance as the rogue grandfather in Little Miss Sunshine. Although Arkin's acting career has far exceeded his other pursuits in terms of notoriety, he is also a childrens book author and a former member of the 1950s folk trio The Tarriers.

"I knew I wanted to act from when I was five, and I started studying seriously when I was six and seven. Not with anybody else, but I used to watch the world as if it was a performance and I would realize that certain things that people did moved me, and certain things didn't move me, and I tried to analyze, even at that age, six and seven and eight, why I was moved by certain things they did."Worldmind: Alan Arkin Interview (October 10, 1995)

• Note: The majority of the links in this timeline are to IMDb, which has pop-ups.

• March 26, 1934: Born

• 1956: "The Banana Boat Song" with The Tarriers

• 1967: The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming

• 1967: Wait Until Dark

• 1968: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

• 1970: Catch-22

• 1992: Glengarry Glen Ross

• 2006: Little Miss Sunshine

• 2008: Marley and Me