Gene Wilder

Gene Wilder (born Jerome Silberman, June 11, 1933 – August 29, 2016) was an American actor, comedian, writer and filmmaker.

Wilder was born Jerome Silberman on June 11, 1933, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the son of Jeanne (Baer) and William J. Silberman, a manufacturer and salesman of novelty items.

His father was a Jewish Russian immigrant, as were his maternal grandparents.

Wilder first became interested in acting at age eight, when his mother was diagnosed with rheumatic fever and the doctor told him to "try and make her laugh."

At the age of 11, he saw his sister, who was studying acting, performing onstage, and the experience enthralled him.

He asked her teacher if he could become his student, and the teacher said that if he was still interested at age 13, he would take Wilder on as a student.

The day after Wilder turned 13, he called the teacher, who accepted him; Wilder studied with him for two years.

When Jeanne Silberman felt that her son's potential was not being fully realized in Wisconsin, she sent him to Black-Foxe, a military institute in Hollywood, where he was bullied and sexually assaulted, primarily because he was the only Jewish boy in the school, according to his own account.

After an unsuccessful short stay at Black-Foxe, Wilder returned home and became increasingly involved with the local theater community.

He performed for the first time in front of a paying audience at age 15, as Balthasar (Romeo's servant) in a production of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.

Gene Wilder graduated from Washington High School in Milwaukee in 1951.

Wilder was raised Jewish, but he held only the Golden Rule as his philosophy.

Following his 1955 graduation from Iowa, he was accepted at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School in Bristol, England.

After six months of studying fencing, Wilder became the first freshman to win the All-School Fencing Championship.

Desiring to study Stanislavski's system, he returned to the US, living with his sister and her family in Queens, New York City.

He enrolled at the HB Studio.

Wilder was drafted into the Army on September 10, 1956.

At the end of recruit training, he was assigned to the medical corps and sent to Fort Sam Houston for training.

He was then given the opportunity to choose any open post and wanting to stay near New York City to attend acting classes at the HB Studio, he chose to serve as paramedic in the Department of Psychiatry and Neurology at Valley Forge Army Hospital, in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania.

In November 1957, his mother died from ovarian cancer.

He was discharged from the army a year later and returned to New York.

A scholarship to the HB Studio allowed him to become a full-time student.

At first living on unemployment insurance and some savings, he later supported himself with odd jobs such as a limousine driver and fencing instructor.

Wilder's first professional acting job was in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he played the Second Officer in Herbert Berghof's production of Twelfth Night.

He also served as a fencing choreographer.

After three years of study with Berghof and Uta Hagen at the HB Studio, Charles Grodin told Wilder about Lee Strasberg's method acting.

He began his career on stage, and made his screen debut in an episode of the TV series The Play of the Week in 1961.

He collaborated with Mel Brooks on the films The Producers (1967), Blazing Saddles (1974) and Young Frankenstein (1974), and with Richard Pryor in the films Silver Streak (1976), Stir Crazy (1980), See No Evil, Hear No Evil (1989) and Another You (1991).

His first film role was that of a hostage in the 1967 motion picture Bonnie and Clyde.

His first major film role was as Leopold Bloom in the 1967 film The Producers, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

It was the first in a series of collaborations with writer/director Mel Brooks, including Young Frankenstein, which Wilder co-wrote, garnering the pair an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay.

He was mainly known for his comedic roles, but also for his portrayal of Willy Wonka in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971).

He also starred in Woody Allen's Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask) (1972).

Wilder directed and wrote several of his own films, including The Woman in Red (1984).

With his third wife, Gilda Radner, he starred in three films, the last two of which he also directed.

Her 1989 death from ovarian cancer led to his active involvement in promoting cancer awareness and treatment, helping found the Gilda Radner Ovarian Cancer Detection Center in Los Angeles and co-founding Gilda's Club.

After his last acting performance in 2003—a guest role on Will & Grace, for which he received an Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series—Wilder turned his attention to writing.

He produced a memoir, Kiss Me Like a Stranger (2005) and five other books.

In a book published in 2005, he stated, "I have no other religion. I feel very Jewish and I feel very grateful to be Jewish. But I don't believe in God or anything to do with the Jewish religion."

Wilder studied Communication and Theatre Arts at the University of Iowa, where he was a member of the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity.