Born into a family of showmen (studio executives and movie theater owners), Bob Balaban pursued instead his passion for creativity, first as an actor on stage (including a 1979 Tony-nominated turn in "The Inspector General") and screen and later as a director of quirky genre TV and features. The diminutive supporting player began working with Chicago's celebrated Second City comedy troupe while still in high school, originated the role of Linus in "You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown" (1967) off-Broadway, and made a memorable film debut as a nervous student who has a bathroom encounter with Jon Voight in "Midnight Cowboy" (1969). Balaban has played a wide range of roles, including an overzealous government investigator ("Absence of Malice") and a crafty prosecuting attorney ("Prince of the City") during his banner year of 1981, as well as an assortment of nerds and nice guys, but most audiences remember him best as an astounded spectator of luminous special effects in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" (1977) and "Altered States" (1980).
Balaban broke into directing with the New York Shakespeare Festival production of "Girls, Girls, Girls" (1980), then turned his attention to TV and film. His first short, "SPFX 1140" (1982), inspired by his experiences on "Close Encounters", recounted a day in the life of a special effects man played by Mandy Patinkin, and its success on the festival circuit led horror auteur George A. Romero to hire him to helm the pilot for "Tales From the Darkside" (1983). Entitled "Trick or Treat", this was a Romero-scripted story of a boy given a frightening opportunity to wipe out all of his parents' debts to an evil businessman. Balaban went on to direct episodes of "Miami Vice" and "Amazing Stories" (both NBC), as well as the Showtime comedy special "Penn & Teller's Invisible Thread" (1987), before making his feature directorial debut with "Parents" (1989), a stylish, overlooked black comedy featuring Randy Quaid as a cannibalistic father. His early work earned the director a reputation for working well with children, FX, and fantastic material.
Balaban stumbled a bit with his sophomore feature, "My Boyfriend's Back" (1993), a black romantic comedy about a lovelorn teen who returns from the grave as a zombie to keep a date with the girl of his dreams. Rebounding from this moronic waste of a good cast (i.e., Cloris Leachman, Austin Pendleton), he wrote, produced and directed the nicely detailed "The Last Good Time" (1994), a well-received feature centering on the unlikely friendship between a retired violinist (Armin Mueller-Stahl) and a young woman (Olivia d'Abo) who reminds him of his deceased wife. Despite his affinity for directing, Balaban continued to act, working in the early 90s with Woody Allen ("Alice" 1990) and Tim Robbins (a wicked send-up of NBC's Lorne Michaels in "Bob Roberts" 1992), collaborations he would renew later in the decade on Allen's "Deconstructing Harry" (1997) and Robbins' "Cradle Will Rock" (1999). He also returned the favor to Mueller-Stahl by appearing in the actor's directing debut, "Conversations with a Beast" (1996).
Of all his work in the 90s, Balaban received his highest profile from his recurring role as a TV executive based on Warren Littlefield in five episodes of the wildly popular NBC sitcom "Seinfeld". He then actually portrayed Littlefield in the HBO-movie "The Late Shift" (1996), about the behind-the-scenes maneuvering by representatives of Jay Leno and David Letterman for the coveted "Tonight Show" hosting duties, replacing Johnny Carson. His directing assignments have included the "5:24" segment of HBO's anthology movie "Subway Stories: Tales from the Underground" (1997), as well as episodes of the short-lived UPN series "Legend" (1995) and the HBO prison drama "Oz" in 1998. He appeared on NBC's "Friends" as the long-lost father of Lisa Kudrow's Phoebe in 1999 to much less fanfare than greeted his "Seinfeld" turn and kept busy acting in projects for both the small screen (i.e., Lifetime's "Giving Up the Ghost" 1998, ABC's "Swing Vote" 1999) and the large (e.g., "Jakob the Liar" 1999).
After a fine turn in the hilarious "Best in Show" (2000), Balaban had another banner year in 2001. He was cast as a gangster's impatient henchman in "The Mexican", was fine as the clueless parent of an alienated teen (Thora Birch) in "Ghost World" and invoked his own heritage as a studio executive during the blacklist in "The Majestic". But it was his participation on various levels with the Robert Altman-directed "Gosford Park" that proved the most rewarding. Although he had auditioned for the director in the 1970s but wasn't cast, he and Altman became friendly. Balaban suggested an idea for a film set in an English country house where a murder occurs. Altman was intrigued and they hired Julian Fellowes to pen the script which saw Balaban as one of the producers and in the cast as a fey American movie producer of Charlie Chan mysteries. Critics praised the film and "Gosford Park" receive seven Academy Award nominations including one for Best Picture. He again collaborated with Altman appearing in the ensemble of "Voltage" (lensed 2002).
Balaban returned to the director’s chair, helming episodes of “Deadline” (NBC, 2000), “Dead Last” (WB, 2001) and “The Twilight Zone” (UPN, 2002), then stepped back in front of the camera for “A Mighty Wind” (2003), Christopher Guest’s hilarious parody of a folk music revival in which he played a neurotic concert organizer who puts together a memorial concert honoring his father, a legendary folk impresario. He then directed a segment for “The First Amendment Project” (Sundance Channel, 2005), a four-part series of 30-minute films that covered First Amendment issues. Balaban’s piece “No Joking” focused on what is protected as free speech and what isn’t, using comedians Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor and George Carlin as examples. Balaban went on to create the short-lived game show “Celebrity Charades” (AMC, 2005) which featured two teams of celebrities competing against each other in a game of charades in order to raise money for charity.
In “Capote” (2005), he played William Shawn, editor of the New Yorker magazine, who is convinced by eccentric novelist Truman Capote (Philip Seymour Hoffman) to send him to Kansas to report on a quadruple murder. He next appeared in M. Night Shyamalan’s critically-maligned “Lady in the Water”(2006), playing a grumpy and bitter film critic living in an apartment building where a water nymph (Bryce Dallas Howard) suddenly appears in the communal swimming pool. In danger of being killed by demon-like creatures from her mysterious water world, the nymph tries to get back to her world with the help of the building’s superintendent (Paul Giamatti) and its motley band of residents. Balaban was then set to be seen in “Trust the Man” (2006), a dramatic-comedy about the romantic escapades of two Manhattan couples, and “For Your Consideration” (2006), a parody focusing on the making of an independent movie and the cast whose lives are turned upside down when their performances are deemed awards-worthy.