Biography

Richard Benjamin

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Although his actress wife Paula Prentiss became a star by the early 1960s, it took Richard Benjamin almost fifteen years to establish his screen persona, but the wait was rewarding. After extensive work in theatre as actor and director, and his participation in the cult TV series He & She (1967), in which he co-starred with Prentiss, he won the starring role in the screen adaptation of Philip Roth's best-seller, Goodbye, Columbus (1969). That was followed by roles in Diary of a Mad Housewife (1970), The Marriage of a Young Stockbroker (1971) and another Roth adaptation, Portnoy's Complaint (1972), that turned him into a prominent "archetype of East Coast Jewish intellectual agony", as critic Jonathan Romney defines him. But his forte was comedy and he won a Golden Globe when he repeated his stage role in the film version of Neil Simon's The Sunshine Boys (1975). Although he still performs, Benjamin turned to direction since the 80s with the highly acclaimed comedy My Favorite Year (1982).
- IMDb mini biography by: Edgar Soberon Torchia <estorchia@gmail.com>

Directed one Oscar nominated performance: Peter O'Toole in My Favorite Year (1982).
In the mid-1950s, another actor, Richard Lightner, also worked under the name of Richard Benjamin and his credits are often erroneously included with those of the better known Richard Benjamin, who first acted professionally in the mid-1960s.
For his work in The Sunshine Boys (1975), he's one of only 7 actors to win the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor in a motion picture without receiving an Oscar nomination for the same performance. The other 6 are, in chronological order: Millard Mitchell in My Six Convicts (1952), Earl Holliman in The Rainmaker (1956), Stephen Boyd in Ben-Hur (1959), Oskar Werner in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965), Richard Attenborough, The Sand Pebbles (1966) and Doctor Dolittle (1967) and Aaron Taylor-Johnson in Nocturnal Animals (2016).
Father of son Ross Benjamin (born in 1974) and daughter, Prentiss Benjamin (born in 1978), with wife Paula Prentiss.
Brother-in-law of Ann Prentiss.

When Paula was sick, people wondered why I didn't leave her. And when I wasn't working they wondered why she didn't leave me. People all along have tried to come between us. It took a long time to figure out that it was their problem, not ours.
[on remaining childless for the first 13 years of marriage] Paula was always on the pill. We didn't want children. We were too wrapped up in ourselves. We couldn't see that what we were looking for could be found in someone else. Having the baby made us grow up. We didn't know anything about babies. It was like waiting for opening night. The doctor told me, 'You won't want to miss this. This is one of the biggies!'
Having Ross put things in perspective. I never used to understand why people wanted to go home right after work. Now that's where I want to be - with Ross.
I always say that you should remake flops, not hits.
[on his Goodbye, Columbus (1969) co-star, Ali MacGraw]: The camera looks into your soul, and it looked into Ali's. Men loved her, women loved her. She was a real movie star.

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