Celebrity Biographies
Wallace Shawn
He taught English in India and Latin and drama in New York. This cartoon writer, actor and dubber began his career as a playwright in 1967, and to this day he has appeared in more than 50 films.
Son of the prestigious writer William Shawn, editor of The New Yorker, Wallace Shawn was born on November 12, 1943 in New York City. He studied history at Harvard University. He later trained in philosophy and economics at Oxford University, but his great interest in writing and acting led him to abandon his career in numbers to focus on acting.
His film debut was with the film Manhattan (1979), where he played Jeremiah, Diane Keaton ‘s ex-husband . The film, directed by and starring the great Woody Allen , earned two Oscar nominations. Although perhaps his best-known film is The Princess Bride (1987), directed by Rob Reiner , where he plays the bad and traitorous genius Vizzini. It narrates, in the form of chivalrous and fanciful adventures, the problems that the beautiful Buttercup and Westley have to be together. He also stood out in Clueless (1995), giving life to Professor Mr. Hall.
In 1981 he starred in My Dinner with André (1981), awarded for best film and best screenplay by the Boston Society of Critics. She picks up the conversation that the actor Wallace Shawn has with the theater director Andre Gregory. Wallace participates in the script for this film, and his brother Allen Shawn was in charge of composing the music.
Director Woody Allen must have liked how Shawn acted, since he had him in four more films: Radio Days (1987), Shadows and Fog (1991), The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (2001) and Melinda and Melinda (2004), where he plays a writer.
In the world of television, Wallace is also well known for series such as Murphy Brown (1988), The Bill Cosby Hour (1984) and Taxi (1978), and we can also see him in special appearances in other prestigious series, such as Ally McBeal (1997), Law and Order: Criminal Intent (2001) and Desperate Housewives (2004), among others. In the television series Gossip Girl (2010) he plays Cyrus Rose, Eleanor Waldorf’s new love and lawyer for that powerful family on the Upper East Side of New York. In the television version of Clueless (1996) we see him in the first season as Mr. Alphonse Hall.
Also, Wallace is a voice actor. He has participated in numerous Disney films such as Toy Story (1995), Toy Story 2 (1999) and Toy Story 3 (2010), voicing the dinosaur Rex. In The Incredibles (2004), a film that won two Oscars, he is Gilbert Huph, Bob’s supervisor at the insurance company; In Chicken Little (2005) he voiced director Veidile and also voiced him in two episodes of the TV series Family Guy , among many other jobs.
Wallace Shawn – known as Wally to his friends – is a man of letters. He has written the screenplay for films such as Marie and Bruce (2004), the story of a couple considering a divorce. And plays like “The Music Teacher”, co-written with his brother Allan and performed on Broadway; “Grasses of a Thousand Colours”, performed at London’s Theater Royal; and “The Fever,” which was later adapted for the big screen.