An extremely versatile character actor who easily oscillated between comedy and drama, Alan Arkin struggled for several years as a theater actor until the early 1960s when he caught his first break by joining the famed comedy troupe, The Second City. With his career officially started, he made a huge impression with an Oscar-nominated performance in Norman Jewison’s raucous Cold War comedy, “The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming” (1966), a film that put Arkin on the map for good. He did take a step backwards with a leading role in “Catch-22” (1970), thanks to the expected hit
