“Do you know what a failure is? A real failure is someone who is so afraid of not winning that they don’t even try. You have to do what you like, and fuck the rest.” If there is a phrase from Alan Arkin What has gone down in the history of cinema is that.In recent hours, many moviegoers have repeated this mantra from the film Little Miss Sunshine on their social networks to remember the American actor, the protagonist of The Kominsky Method, who died this week in California at age 89.
His sons, also actors Adam, Anthony and Matthew Arkin, were in charge of announcing the sad news through a statement. “Our father was a uniquely talented force of nature, both as an artist and as a man. A loving husband, father, grandfather and great grandfather, he was adored and will be sorely missed.”
Born in the district of Brooklyn, in New York, origin of which he always boasted, although settled from a very early age in Los Angeles, Arkin began his first steps in the world of acting on Broadway. However, it did not take him long to make the leap to the big screen, since from the beginning he was clear that this was going to be his goal. And he not only did it, but he accumulated more than a hundred films behind him.
His film debut was in 1966, and he did it in style, in the film What are the Russians coming! His performance as Lieutenant Rozanov, the man who leads an expedition to unravel a submarine off the coast of New England, was applauded by audiences and critics alike, earning him an Oscar nomination for Best Actor and a Globe Award nomination. Gold.
Two years later, in 1968, he obtained another nomination for the golden statuette for The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, a film based on the famous novel of the same name by Carson McCullers and in which he gave life to John Singer, a deaf man who moves to another city to be close to his friend Antonapoulos, who is also deaf.
Although he always maintained that awards were not his main obsession and that he acted because that was his way of life and fun, it must be said that the effort paid off and he ended up winning a Tony, a Bafta, a Golden Globe and, finally, , the expected Oscar for best supporting actor. It happened in 2006 thanks to his role as Edwin in Little Miss Sunshine, a World War II veteran who is forced to live at his son’s house after being expelled from a nursing home for using and selling heroin. Despite his bad-tempered character, he hits it off with Olive, the youngest of the family, played by Abigail Breslin.
The fact that the seventh art was his great passion did not exempt him from developing his creativity in other areas, such as writing. Arkin published six books and was behind the script and direction of two short films. In addition, he also tried his luck on the small screen, forming part of the cast of series such as Betrayal at the Pentagon, The Escape from Sobibor, Chicago Hope or 100 Center Street, in which he was the main protagonist.
And not to forget his musical facet, prior to all these successes, by the hand of the band The Tarriers, which became very popular in the mid-50s with the song The Banana Boat Song, whose lyrics Arkin wrote.
