Woody Allen (born Allan Stewart Konigsberg; December 1, 1935) is an American actor, writer, director, comedian, playwright, and musician whose career spans more than six decades. By the mid-1960s Allen was writing and directing films, first specializing in slapstick comedies before moving into dramatic material influenced by European art cinema during the 1970s, and alternating between comedies and dramas to the present. He is often identified as part of the New Hollywood wave of filmmakers of the mid-1960s to late 1970s. Allen often stars in his films, typically in the persona he developed as a standup. Critic Roger Ebert described Allen as "a treasure of the cinema."