Gene Wilder biography

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Gene Wilder was born Jerome Silverman in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on June 11, 1933, to a Jewish family. His father, William, had emigrated from Russia. His mother, Jeanne, was often ill from complications from rheumatic heart disease, and a doctor warned the 8-year-old Jerome, "don't ever argue with your mother ... you might kill her. Try to make her laugh." These circumstances began Wilder's lifelong calling to acting, as he made his mother laugh by putting on different accents. After a brief stint in a California military academy, Wilder moved back to Milwaukee and became involved with the local theater scene, making his stage debut as Balthasar in a production of Romeo and Juliet.

After graduating from high school, Wilder studied Communication and Theatre Arts at the University of Iowa, following that with a year studying theater and fencing at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School in Bristol, United Kingdom. He returned to the United States to study the Stanislavski method of acting, but was promptly drafted into the U.S. Army for two years, during which time he worked as a medic in Pennsylvania. Next, Wilder moved to New York City, where he took a variety of odd jobs, including a position as a fencing teacher, to support himself while he studied acting.

At age 26, Wilder decided that he "couldn't quite see a marquee reading 'Jerry Silverman as Macbeth,'" and took the stage name Gene Wilder. He took his new first name from a character in a Thomas Wolfe novel, and his last from the playwright Thornton Wilder. He started appearing with some regularity in off-Broadway and Broadway shows. In a 1963 production of Mother Courage and Her Children, he met Anne Bancroft, who introduced him to her boyfriend, Mel Brooks. Wilder and Brooks became fast friends, and Brooks decided he wanted to cast Wilder in a production of the screenplay he was writing, The Producers.

Gene Wilder made his film debut with a minor role in 1967's Bonnie and Clyde. He took on his first major role in The Producers, playing Leo Bloom against Zero Mostel's Max Bialystock. The film was a box office flop and received mixed reviews, but Wilder earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. He quickly became an in-demand commodity in Hollywood, taking parts in several comedies (and famously playing an idiosyncratic Willy Wonka in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory). None of the films, though, met with much commercial success. He finally broke his streak with a role in Woody Allen's 1972 film Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask). He then took