A PALE, bespectacled, 120-pound neurotic, Woody Allen polished his misfit persona in Greenwich Village cafes before recording three hit comedy albums in the sixties. In his early twenties, he was already joking about his divorce from Harlene Rosen (they had spent four years together), and earning six thousand dollars a month as a television gag writer. In 1965, Allen wrote and acted in What's New, Pussycat? with Louise Lasser, whom he married the following year. In 1969, he made his directorial debut with Take the Money and Run, a spoof on crime documentaries. From his idiosyncratic, urban-Jewish shtick, Allen also mined two Broadway hits, many New Yorker pieces, and several books.

As Allen's career and neuroses blossomed apace, he tethered himself to a ritualized life of tennis, clarinet and shrink sessions, filmmaking, and dinner at Elaine's. He is reclusive and anti-Hollywood, and he rarely leaves Manhattan. "I don't want to live in a city where the only cultural advantage is that you can make a right turn on a red light," he said in Annie Hall.

Allen drove the point home by not showing up to collect his three Oscars for that 1977 film (he chose instead to keep his regular Monday-night gig with his jazz band). Around that time, Allen lost his leading lady and lover, Diane Keaton, who took up with Warren Beatty. In 1980, he embarked on a live-out relationship with actress Mia Farrow and her brood of children. With Farrow he adopted two more children (Moses and Dylan) and had a son of his own (Satchel), bringing Mia's total to twelve. Also with Farrow, he made eleven movies and became the subject of shocking headlines. Accused of incest with Dylan and infamy with teenaged Soon-Yi Previn (whom Mia had adopted during her marriage to conductor Andre Previn), the auteur of angst waged a losing custody and publicity battle in 1993. The sexual-abuse accusations were found to be unsubstantiated, but the infamy he readily admitted (he and Soon-Yi would marry in late 1997). Allen was later permitted to resume visitation with Satchel (now called Seamus), but was barred from spending time with Dylan (now called Eliza).

In 1994, Allen made a film, Bullets Over Broadway, with an unmistakable message: all's fair in love and art. His next, Mighty Aphrodite, dealt with adoption and infidelity, two topics he is intimately familiar with. He plumbed the light-hearted side of neurosis in his first feature musical, 1996's Everyone Says I Love You, but the following year's Deconstructing Harry witnessed his return to familiar dark exploration and self-loathing.

In 1998, Allen voiced the regular-Joe insect hero of Antz, and delivered the goods with Celebrity, which follows the lives of two New Yorkers following their divorce. He married two of his weaknesses - music and nostalgia — in the 1999 release Sweet and Lowdown, which showcased Sean Penn in the role of a '30s-era drunken scamp of a jazz guitarist.