I've sat looking down into a volcano that could blow at any moment; I've helped catch a shark and several rattlesnakes; I let a tarantula walk across my hand, and I ate rat soup.

After the release of the movie Tower Heist Alda was devastated when on December 7 2011 he lost his idol and decades-long friend Harry Morgan who played opposite Alda as Colonel Sherman T. He appears briefly in Don De Lillo's novel Underworld as a high school student in 1951 who wants his friends to stop calling him Alphonso and start calling him Alan because he's going to be a movie star. A.

A six-time Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award winner he is best known for his starring roles as Hawkeye Pierce in the TV series M*A*S*H and Arnold Vinick in The West Wing and his supporting role in the 2004 film The Aviator for which he was nominated for an Academy Award. Alphonso Joseph D'Abruzzo (born January 28 1936) better known as Alan Alda is an American actor director screenwriter and author.