He grew up among show business families in Southern California, attending Beverly Hills High School with Richard Dreyfuss and Rob Reiner.

[7] In 1970–71, he also 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.

[12] 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.

[13] His best-received film, 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.

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.

He had a cameo in the opening scene of Twilight Zone: The Movie, playing a driver whose passenger (Dan Aykroyd) has a shocking secret.

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).

[17] Brooks co-starred as the vicious gangster Bernie Rose, the main antagonist in the 2011 film Drive, alongside Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan.

"[18][19] 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.

[20] 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.

Later that month, on the podcast WTF with Marc Maron, Brooks supplemented the biographical information in the documentary with additional stories from his life.