Albert Brooks

• Birthplace: Los Angeles, California, USA
• Birthday: July 22, 1947

Called the West Coast Woody Allen for his cerebral brand of comedy, actor-writer-director Albert Brooks turned down the Billy Crystal role in "When Harry Met Sally..." (1989) precisely because "it read to me like a Woody Allen movie, verbatim. And I thought that was not something I should be in." Though both are tortured insecure geniuses of Hebraic descent who changed their names and abandoned brilliant stand-up careers to make movies, Brooks is by far the slower worker, helming on average only one movie every 3.5 years (si…more