Portrait of Austin Pendleton

Birthday profile

Austin Pendleton

Austin Pendleton, American actor, director, and playwright

Born
March 27, 1940
Age in 2026
86
Zodiac sign
Aries
Birth year
1940

About Austin Pendleton

Austin Campbell Pendleton (born March 27, 1940) is an American actor, playwright, and theatre director. Pendleton is known as a prolific character actor on the stage and screen, whose six-decade career has included roles in films including Catch-22 (1970); What's Up, Doc? (1972); The Front Page (1974); The Muppet Movie (1979), Short Circuit (1986); Mr. & Mrs. Bridge (1990); My Cousin Vinny (1992); Mr. Nanny (1993); Guarding Tess (1994); Amistad (1997); A Beautiful Mind (2001), which earned him a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture nomination; and Finding Nemo (2003). Pendleton received a Tony Award nomination for Best Direction of a Play for the Broadway revival of The Little Foxes in 1981, starring Elizabeth Taylor. He received Obie and Drama Desk Awards for Outstanding Performance in The Last Sweet Days of Isaac in 1970, and an additional Special Drama Desk Award for being a "Renaissance Man of the American Theatre" in 2007. He received an additional Obie Award for directing the Off-Broadway revival of Three Sisters in 2011. Pendleton's recent Broadway credits include acting in Choir Boy in 2016 and The Minutes in 2022, and directing Between Riverside and Crazy, also in 2022. His 2011 directing of Three Sisters won him an Obie Award. Roger Ailes, who became the CEO of Fox News, was a childhood acquaintance of Pendleton in Warren, Ohio. Pendleton became interested in the theater through his mother, whose performances he watched when he was young. Pendleton went on to appear in The Last Sweet Days of Isaac (for which he won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Performance and an Obie Award), The Diary of Anne Frank, Goodtime Charley, and Up from Paradise, and many other plays.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

The world when Austin Pendleton was born

Austin Pendleton was born in 1940. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Culture in 1940

  • #1 song"In the Mood" – Glenn Miller
  • Top movieRebecca
  • Best-selling bookFor Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway

Headlines and milestones

  • Major sports momentFirst televised college basketball game
  • Top headlineWinston Churchill becomes British Prime Minister
  • Technology milestoneFirst McDonald's restaurant opens
  • Defining fadSwing music hits its peak
  • Notable inventionJeep (military vehicle)
  • World population2.30 billion

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderFranklin D. Roosevelt
  • Sports championCincinnati Reds (World Series)
  • U.S. population132.2M

1940 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Austin Pendleton's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure19402026
Gas$0.18$3.45/gal
Average home$5,300$435,000
Average income$3,100$67,500
Minimum wage$0.30$7.25/hr (federal)
Movie ticket$0.25$11.95
Postage stamp$0.03$0.73
Population132.2M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, IMDb. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.