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‘My mother didn’t try to stab my father until I was six’: Alan Alda on childhood, marriage and 60 years of stardom

Best known as Hawkeye in M*A*S*H in the 70s, the 89-year-old actor has topped the Netflix charts with a revamp of his 1981 film The Four Seasons. He talks about Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen – and what he really thinks of Donald Trump

Alda is a warm and generous presenter, and in more than 350 episodes he has interviewed a fascinating range of people, including AI guru Jaron Lanier, Paul McCartney, members of the M*A*S*H cast, astrophysicist Mario Livio, and Michael J Fox about how he has coped with his Parkinson’s. “I was in college in Paris, Dad was making a TV series in Amsterdam and Mum was running down the hotel corridor one night naked banging on doors.” In 2006, Alda won an Emmy for playing Arnold Vinick in The West Wing, a moderate Republican presidential candidate who ends up as secretary of state in a Democrat government.

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