Alan Arkin, an acclaimed actor whose career spanned over seven decades and who garnered multiple Oscar, Tony and Emmy nominations over the years, winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for 2006's Little Miss Sunshine, has died at age 89.

Born in Brooklyn, Arkin moved with his family to Hollywood after World War II as his father got a job as a set designer. His parents were accused of being Communists during the 1950s, and Arkin's father, David, was fired after he refused to cooperate. Arkin began acting at a young age, but it wasn't until a brief sojourn as a musician (he was in a Calypso group called The Tarriers that did a hit arrangement of the Jamaican standard, "The Banana Boat Song (Day-O)," the same year that Harry Belafonte had an even bigger hit with a different arrangement of that song) that he began acting in earnest, becoming one of the earliest members of the Second City comedy troupe in Chicago. It was with the Second City that Arkin made his Broadway debut in the 1961 From the Second City production.

Two years later, in 1963, Arkin co-starred on Broadway in Enter Laughing, a Joseph Stein play based on Carl Reiner's autobiographical novel of the same name. Arkin played the character based on Reiner. Arkin won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play. His success in Enter Laughing netted him a role in Mike Nichols' play the following year, Luv. Arkin received his first Emmy Award nomination for starring in the 1966 TV film, The Love Song of Barney Kempinski, which was the first story in the acclaimed anthology series, ABC Stage 67. Reiner's stage work also led to him being cast as the lead in Norman Jewison's hit 1966 satirical comedy, The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming (opposite Carl Reiner, the man who Arkin essentially portrayed in Enter Laughing). Arkin was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for the film.

Now a movie star, Arkin had an eventful 1968, taking over from Peter Sellers in the Pink Panther film series, and netting another Academy Award nomination for Best Actor for his performance as a blind mute in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. In 1969, Arkin wrote and directed an unusual project that received an Oscar nomination for Best Short Film. In the 1950s, Arkin had written a science fiction story, "People Soup," for Galaxy Science Fiction magazine, and he adapted the story about two brothers who create a magical soup, and he had his own two young sons, Alan and Matthew Arkin, star in the short film, People Soup,

Arkin worked steadily throughout the 1970s, mostly in film, but also netting a Tony nomination for Best Director for directing Neil Simon's The Sunshine Boys in 1975. In 1979, Arkin starred in the buddy comedy, The In-Laws, with Peter Falk, one of his biggest hit leading roles. In the 1980s, Arkin continued to work in film, but also began to do more television work, stints on some notable series, like St. Elsewhere, as well as TV movies. In 1987, he had a short-lived sitcom, Harry, but also starred in the TV movie, Escape from Sobibor, about a Jewish uprising at an extermination camp during World War II. Arkin was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Actor in a Limited Series or Movie.

In the 1990s, now a bit of an elder statesman, Arkin appeared in a number of notable film supporting roles in films as varied as Edward Scissorhands, The Rocketeer, Glengarry Glen Ross, Indian Summer, So I Married an Axe Murderer, Grosse Pointe Blank and Gattaca. He eanred another Emmy nomination for a notable guest spot on his son Adam's TV series, Chicago Hope.

He earned another Emmy nomination for the TV film, The Pentagon Papers, in 2003. His strong string of supporting film roles led to him winning his first Oscar for playing the irascible grandfather in Little Miss Sunshine in 2006. Six years later, he received his final Oscar nomination for a supporting role in the hit film, Argo.

Most recently, Arkin received Emmy nominations for the first two seasons of the Chuck Lorre Netflix sitcom, The Kominsky Method, starring Michael Douglas as an actor turned acting teacher (with Arkin as his longtime agent).

Arkin is survived by his three sons (Adam and Matthew, who he had with his first wife, and Tony, who he had with his second wife) and his third wife, Suzanne Newlander.