Alda was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Owen Brewster in Martin Scorsese's The Aviator (2004).

Other notable film roles include Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993), Everyone Says I Love You (1996), Flirting with Disaster (1996), Tower Heist (2011), Bridge of Spies (2015), and Marriage Story (2019).

Alda is also known for his roles on Broadway acting in Purlie Victorious (1961) and receiving three Tony Award nominations for his performances in The Apple Tree (1967), Jake's Women (1992), and Glengarry Glen Ross (2005).

In 2008 he received a Grammy Award for Best Audio Book, Narration & Storytelling Recording nomination for Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself.

[4] His father, Robert Alda (born Alfonso Giuseppe Giovanni Roberto D'Abruzzo), was an actor and singer; and his mother, Joan Browne, was a homemaker and former beauty-pageant winner.

To combat the disease, his parents administered a painful treatment regimen developed by Sister Elizabeth Kenny, consisting of applying hot woollen blankets to his limbs and stretching his muscles.

[8] He studied English at Fordham University in the Bronx, where he was a student staff member of its FM radio station, WFUV.

Alda began his career in the 1950s as a member of the Compass Players, an improvisational comedy revue directed by Paul Sills.

He joined the acting company at the Cleveland Play House during their 1958–1959 season as part of a grant from the Ford Foundation, appearing in productions such as To Dorothy a Son, Heaven Come Wednesday, Monique, and Job.

He made his Hollywood acting debut as a supporting player in Gone Are the Days!, a film version of the Broadway play Purlie Victorious, which co-starred Ruby Dee and her husband, Ossie Davis.

In early 1972, Alda was selected to play Hawkeye Pierce in the TV adaptation of the 1970 film M*A*S*H.[8] He was nominated for 21 Emmy Awards, and won five.

As the original writers gradually left the show, Alda gained increasing control, and by the final seasons had become a producer and creative consultant.

[26] Anticipating the fourth season, Alda and the producers sought a replacement for the surrogate parent role embodied in the character of Colonel Blake.

Veteran actor Harry Morgan, who was a fan of the series, joined the cast as Colonel Sherman T. Potter and carried on as one of the show's lead protagonists.

In 1976, The Boston Globe dubbed him "the quintessential Honorary Woman: a feminist icon" for his activism on behalf of the Equal Rights Amendment.

[33] During M*A*S*H's run and continuing through the 1980s, Alda embarked on a successful career as a writer and director, with the ensemble comedy drama, The Four Seasons being perhaps his most notable hit.

In 1999, Alda portrayed Dr. Gabriel Lawrence in NBC program ER for five episodes and was nominated for Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series.

Beginning in 2004, Alda was a regular cast member on the NBC program The West Wing, portraying California Republican U.S.

In 2004, Alda portrayed conservative Maine Senator Owen Brewster in Martin Scorsese's Academy Award-winning film The Aviator, in which he co-starred with Leonardo DiCaprio.

In this book, he voiced Arthur Sinclair Jr., the director of the United States government's fictional Department of Strategic Resources (DeStRes).

Alda returned to Broadway in November 2014, playing the role of Andrew Makepeace in the revival of Love Letters at the Brooks Atkinson Theater alongside Candice Bergen.

[39] In 2015, Alda appeared as a lawyer, Thomas Watters, alongside Tom Hanks as James Donovan, in Steven Spielberg's critically acclaimed cold war drama film Bridge of Spies which received an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture.

In 2019, Alda appeared in Noah Baumbach's thirteenth film, Marriage Story, as a warm-hearted lawyer who represents a stage director (Adam Driver) during the divorce proceedings.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Alda discussed the effects of his illness, mainly Parkinson's disease, and other related issues.

[46] For 14 years, he served as the host of Scientific American Frontiers, a television show that explored cutting-edge advances in science and technology.

Alda has an avid interest in cosmology, and participated in BBC coverage of the opening of the Large Hadron Collider, at CERN, Geneva, in September 2008.

They bonded at a mutual friend's dinner party; when a rum cake accidentally fell onto the kitchen floor, they were the only two guests who did not hesitate to eat it.

[59] In Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself, Alda described how as a teen he was raised as a Roman Catholic and eventually he realized he had begun thinking like an agnostic or atheist.

[24] Among other stories, he recalls his intestines becoming strangulated while on location in La Serena, Chile, for his PBS show Scientific American Frontiers, during which he mildly surprised a young doctor with his understanding of medical procedures, which he had learned from M*A*S*H. He also talks about his mother's battle with schizophrenia.

His second memoir, Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself[63] (2008), weaves together advice from public speeches he has given with personal recollections about his life and beliefs.