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Elaine May (born April 21, 1932) is an American screenwriter, film director, actress and comedian. She made her initial impact in the 1950s from her improvisational comedy routines with Mike Nichols, performing as Nichols and May. After her duo with Nichols ended, May subsequently developed a career as a director and screenwriter. She has been twice nominated for an Academy Award, for ''Heaven Can Wait'' (1978) and the Nichols-directed ''Primary Colors'' (1998), but remains best known perhaps for her 1971 black comedy ''A New Leaf'', in which she also starred. In 1996, she reunited with Nichols to write the screenplay for ''The Birdcage'', directed by Nichols. She received the National Medal of Arts in 2012 for her contributions.〔("President Obama to Award 2012 National Medal of Arts and National Humanities Medal" ), whitehouse.gov; July 3, 2013; accessed February 11, 2014.〕 After studying acting with theater coach Maria Ouspenskaya in Los Angeles, she moved to Chicago in 1955 and became a founding member of the Compass Players, an improvisational theater group. May began working alongside Nichols, who was also in the group, and together they began writing and performing their own comedy sketches, which were enormously popular. In 1957 they both quit the group to form their own stage act, Nichols and May, in New York. Jack Rollins, who produced most of Woody Allen's films, said their act was "so startling, so new, as fresh as could be. I was stunned by how really good they were." They performed nightly to mostly sold-out shows, in addition to making various TV and radio appearances. In their comedy act, they created satirical clichés and character types which made fun of the new intellectual, cultural, and social order that was just emerging at the time. In doing so, "May cracked the stereotype of what roles a woman could play", wrote Gerald Nachman, "breaking through the psychological restrictions of playing comedy as a woman." Together, they became an inspiration to many younger comedians, including Lily Tomlin and Steve Martin. After four years, at the height of their fame, they decided to discontinue their act and took their careers in different directions, Nichols becoming a leading film director and May becoming primarily a screenwriter and playwright, along with acting and directing. Their relatively brief time together as comedy stars led New York talk show host Dick Cavett to call their act "one of the comic meteors in the sky." Nachman noted that "Nichols and May are perhaps the most ardently missed of all the satirical comedians of their era."〔 ==Early years and personal life== May was born Elaine Iva Berlin in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1932, the daughter of Jewish parents, theater director/actor Jack Berlin and actress Ida (Aaron) Berlin.〔〔https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:K8KL-QTF〕 As a child, Elaine performed with her father in his traveling Yiddish theater company, which he took around the country. Her stage debut on the road was at the age of three, and she eventually played the character of a generic little boy named Benny.〔Thompson, Thomas. “What Ever Happened to Elaine May?”, ''Life Magazine'', July 28, 1967.〕 Because the troupe toured extensively, May had been in over 50 different schools by the time she was ten, having spent as little as a few weeks enrolled at any one time. May says she hated school and would spend her free time at home reading fairy tales and mythology. Her father died when she was 11 years old, and then she and her mother moved to Los Angeles, where May later enrolled in Hollywood High School. She dropped out when she was fourteen years old. Two years later, aged sixteen, she married Marvin May, an engineer and toy inventor. They had one child, Jeannie Berlin (born 1949), who became an actress and screenwriter. May and Berlin divorced years later, and she married lyricist Sheldon Harnick in 1962; they divorced a year later. May married, lastly, her psychoanalyst, Dr. David L. Rubinfine; they remained married until his death in 1982.〔 May's current longtime companion is director Stanley Donen, whom she has dated since 1999. Donen claims to have proposed marriage "about 172 times." 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Elaine May」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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