Brooks attended Carnegie Institute of Technology (now
Carnegie Mellon University) in
Pittsburgh (where his classmates included
Michael McKean and
David L. Lander), but dropped out after one year to focus on his comedy career. By the age of 19, he had changed his professional name to Albert Brooks, joking that "the real
Albert Einstein changed his name to sound more intelligent". He quickly became a regular on variety and talk shows during the late 1960s and early 1970s, and was on the writing staff for the ill-fated ABC show
Turn-On, which was cancelled after one episode. In 1970–71, he worked with college friends McKean and Lander (alongside
Harry Shearer) as a writer/guest performer on some early material by radio and LP record comedy group
The Credibility Gap. Brooks led a new generation of self-reflective baby-boomer comics appearing on NBC's
The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. His on-stage persona, that of an
egotistical,
narcissistic, nervous comic, an ironic showbiz insider who punctured himself before an audience by disassembling his mastery of comedic stagecraft, influenced other
post-modern comedians of the 1970s, including
Steve Martin,
Martin Mull, and
Andy Kaufman. After two successful comedy albums,
Comedy Minus One (1973) and the
Grammy Award-nominated
A Star Is Bought (1975), Brooks left the stand-up circuit to try his hand as a filmmaker. He had already made his first short film,
The Famous Comedians School, a satiric short and an early example of the
mockumentary subgenre that was aired in 1972 on the
PBS show
The Great American Dream Machine. In 1975, Brooks directed six short films for the first season of
NBC's
Saturday Night Live. In 1976, he appeared in his first mainstream film role, in
Martin Scorsese's landmark
Taxi Driver; Scorsese allowed Brooks to improvise much of his dialogue. Brooks directorial debut was
Real Life (1979), which he co-wrote with Harry Shearer and
Monica Johnson. The film, in which Brooks (playing a version of himself) films a typical suburban family in an effort to win both an
Oscar and a
Nobel Prize, was a sendup of
PBS's
An American Family documentary. It has been viewed as foretelling the emergence of
reality television. Brooks appeared in the film
Private Benjamin (1980), starring
Goldie Hawn. Through the 1980s and 1990s, Brooks co-wrote (with long-time collaborator
Monica Johnson), directed and starred in a series of well-received comedies, playing variants on his standard neurotic and self-obsessed character. These include 1981's
Modern Romance, where Brooks played a film editor desperate to win back his ex-girlfriend (
Kathryn Harrold). The film received a limited release and ultimately grossed under $3 million domestically. His best-received film, the satirical road movie
Lost in America (1985), featured Brooks and
Julie Hagerty as a couple who leave their
yuppie lifestyle and drop out of society to live in a motor home as they have always dreamed of doing, meeting disappointment. Brooks's
Defending Your Life (1991) placed his lead character in the
afterlife, put on trial to justify his human fears and determine his cosmic fate. Critics responded to the off-beat premise and the chemistry between Brooks and
Meryl Streep, as his post-death love interest. His later efforts did not find large audiences, but still retained Brooks's touch as a filmmaker. He garnered positive reviews for
Mother (1996), which starred Brooks as a middle-aged writer moving back home to resolve tensions between himself and his mother (
Debbie Reynolds).
1999's The Muse featured Brooks as a Hollywood screenwriter who has "lost his edge", using the services of an authentic
muse (
Sharon Stone) for inspiration. In an interview with Brooks with regard to
The Muse, Gavin Smith wrote, "Brooks's distinctive film making style is remarkably discreet and unemphatic; he has a light, deft touch, with a classical precision and economy, shooting and cutting his scenes in smooth, seamless successions of medium shots, with clean, high-key lighting." Brooks has appeared as a guest voice on
The Simpsons seven times (always under the name
A. Brooks). He is described as the best guest star in the show's history by
IGN, particularly for his role as supervillain
Hank Scorpio in the episode "
You Only Move Twice". Brooks also acted in other writers' and directors' films during the 1980s and 1990s. He had a cameo in the opening scene of
Twilight Zone: The Movie, playing a driver whose passenger (
Dan Aykroyd) has a shocking secret. In
James L. Brooks's hit
Broadcast News (1987), Albert Brooks was nominated for an
Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for playing an insecure, supremely ethical television news reporter, who offers the rhetorical question, "Wouldn't this be a great world if insecurity and desperation made us more attractive?" He also won positive notices for his role in 1998's
Out of Sight, playing an untrustworthy banker and ex-convict. at the premiere of
Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World in 2006 Brooks received positive reviews for his portrayal of a dying retail store owner who befriends a disillusioned teenager (played by
Leelee Sobieski) in
My First Mister (2001). Brooks continued his voiceover work in
Pixar's
Finding Nemo (2003), as the voice of Marlin, one of the film's protagonists. His 2005 film
Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World was dropped by
Sony Pictures due to its desire to change the title.
Warner Independent Pictures purchased the film and gave it a limited release in January 2006; the film received mixed reviews and a low box office gross. As with
Real Life, Brooks plays a fictionalized "Albert Brooks", a filmmaker ostensibly commissioned by the US government to see what makes the Muslim people laugh, and sending him on a tour of India and Pakistan. In 2006, he appeared in the documentary film
Wanderlust as David Howard from
Lost in America. In 2007, he continued his long-term collaboration with
The Simpsons by voicing Russ Cargill, the central antagonist of
The Simpsons Movie. He portrayed Lenny Botwin,
Nancy Botwin's estranged father-in-law, during the 2008 season of the
Showtime series
Weeds.
2030: The Real Story of What Happens to America, his first novel, was published by
St. Martin's Press on May 10, 2011. Brooks co-starred as the vicious gangster Bernie Rose, the main antagonist in the 2011 film
Drive, alongside
Ryan Gosling and
Carey Mulligan. His performance received much critical praise and positive reviews. After receiving awards and nominations from several film festivals and critic groups, but not an Academy Award nomination, Brooks responded humorously on
Twitter, "And to the Academy: 'You don't like me. You really don't like me'." Brooks voiced Tiberius, a curmudgeonly red-tailed hawk, in the 2016 film
The Secret Life of Pets, and reprised the role of Marlin in
Finding Dory the same year. In 2019, Brooks did not return to do the voice of Tiberius in
The Secret Life of Pets 2, because he was not available. In early November 2023, a documentary about the comedian/filmmaker,
Albert Brooks: Defending My Life, directed by his friend
Rob Reiner, was released on
Max. The documentary includes interviews from
David Letterman,
Sharon Stone,
Larry David,
James L Brooks,
Conan O'Brien,
Sarah Silverman,
Ben Stiller, and others. Later that month, on the podcast
WTF with Marc Maron, Brooks supplemented the biographical information in the documentary with additional stories from his life. ==Personal life==