Barry Levinson
April 6, 1942 — Baltimore, Maryland
Barry Levinson is an American filmmaker, writer, and producer who won the Academy Award for directing Rain Man (1988) and built one of the most distinctive bodies of work in American cinema through an intimate series of Baltimore-set films that explored friendship, memory, and the passage of time with warmth, wit, and deep personal feeling.
Baltimore and the Comedy Writing Years
Born on April 6, 1942, in Baltimore, Maryland, Barry Levinson studied broadcast journalism at American University in Washington, D.C., before finding his way into comedy writing — writing for The Carol Burnett Show, Mel Brooks's Silent Movie (1976) and High Anxiety (1977), and other projects. His collaboration with Brooks gave him both a filmmaking education and a creative confidence that led him to direct his own first feature. Diner (1982) — a semi-autobiographical film about a group of Baltimore friends reluctant to enter adulthood — was a sleeper hit that launched the careers of Kevin Bacon, Mickey Rourke, Daniel Stern, and Ellen Barkin, and established Levinson's voice as a director: intimate, conversational, nostalgic but never saccharine.
Rain Man and Major Studio Success
After the baseball classic The Natural (1984) with Robert Redford and the Cold War comedy Good Morning, Vietnam (1987) with Robin Williams, Levinson directed Rain Man (1988) — the story of a self-centered car dealer who discovers he has an autistic older brother. The film starred Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman and became one of the decade's great commercial and critical successes, winning four Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director. Hoffman's performance as Raymond Babbitt, the autistic savant, became one of cinema's most discussed characterizations and changed public understanding of autism in America.
Did You Know?
Barry Levinson's Baltimore tetralogy — Diner (1982), Tin Men (1987), Avalon (1990), and Liberty Heights (1999) — covers different eras of Baltimore Jewish life from the post-World War II years through the late 1960s, drawing heavily on his own family and childhood memories. Together they form one of the most coherent and personal regional portraits in American film history. Levinson has said he intends the four films as chapters in a single, ongoing memoir, and that the city of Baltimore is as much a character as any individual in them.
Later Work and Television
Levinson has continued working prolifically across decades: the political satire Wag the Dog (1997), the dark drama Bugsy (1991), and numerous television projects including creating the HBO drama series Oz (1997) and Homicide: Life on the Street (1993) — both of which set new standards for serious dramatic television. His documentary work includes Poliwood and You Don't Know Jack (2010), the latter earning Al Pacino an Emmy for playing assisted suicide advocate Jack Kevorkian. Levinson's productivity, range, and the consistent quality of his personal work make him one of the most accomplished American filmmakers of his generation.