Alan Alda
But he is best known for his role in a series he never expected to be successful.
By CBSNews.com senior editor David Morgan
He performed in a comedy revue, the Compass Players, and in 1966 earned a Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Musical for "The Apple Tree."
Instead, "MASH" ran on CBS from 1972 to 1983, and was one of the most successful comedy-drama series ever. It won Alda two Emmy Awards playing Capt. Benjamin Franklin (Hawkeye) Pierce, and two more Emmys for writing and directing.
And while the cast changed members over its several seasons Alda stayed through to the very end, in a concluding episode what was the most-watched TV series episode ever.
"You don't think of knowledge as a curse, but it's a curse if I think you know everything I know and I talk to you in ways [where] you can't understand me," Alda said. "So that's not only the public, that's policy makers like Congress, who have told me over and over again they cannot understand scientists who come in to talk to them."
"It makes you present, It makes you alive," he explained to Tracy Smith. "You're here and now, you're talking to another actor. You're not pretending to talk to the actor, you're really talking to the actor. That changes everything about you. And it changes the other person, too, because if you're working with a salami, you're not going to react to that person."
"Did you work with a few salamis?" Smith asked.
"Sometimes, yes!"
By CBSNews.com senior editor David Morgan