Bob Balaban

Born: August 16 1945
Where: Chicago, Illinois, USA

Born into a family of Chicago studio executives and cinema owners, the diminutive Balaban instead initially opted for the stage.

He began working with Chicago's celebrated Second City comedy troupe while still in high school and originated the role of Linus in You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown.

Balaban also made a memorable film debut as a nervous student who has a bathroom encounter with Jon Voight in Midnight Cowboy.

He has played a wide range of roles, including an overzealous government investigator (Absence of Malice) and a crafty prosecuting attorney (Prince of the City).

However, most audiences remember him best as an astounded spectator of luminous special effects in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Balaban also broke into directing with the New York Shakespeare Festival production of Girls, Girls, Girls in 1980 then turned his attention to TV and film.

TV work included Miami Vice, Penn & Teller's Invisible Thread before he made his feature debut with Parents, starring Randy Quaid.

Balaban stumbled a bit with My Boyfriend's Back, a black romantic comedy about a lovelorn teen who returns from the grave as a zombi.

He then wrote, produced and directed the nicely detailed The Last Good Time, centring on the unlikely friendship between a retired violinist (Armin Mueller-Stahl) and a young woman (Olivia d'Abo).

Despite his affinity for directing, Balaban continued to act, working in the early 90s with Woody Allen in Alice and Tim Robbins Bob Roberts.

These collaborations he would later renew in the decade on Allen's Deconstructing Harry and Robbins' Cradle Will Rock.

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 Seinfeld.

He appeared in Friends as the long-lost father of Lisa Kudrow's Phoebe and also appeared on the big screen in Jakob the Liar.

After a fine turn in the hilarious Best in Show, Balaban was cast as a gangster's impatient henchman in The Mexican.

He impressed 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.

However, it was his participation on various levels with the Robert Altman-directed Gosford Park that proved the most rewarding.

Balaban suggested an idea for an English country house whodunnit and Altman cast him as the American movie producer in the film, which won seven Oscar nominations.

Recent work saw Balaban reunited with Best in Show's Christopher Guest for the folk music parody A Mighty Wind with Eugene Levy.