lan Arkin enjoyed such success in his later years playing cantankerous curmudgeons, you could be forgiven for assuming that was all he was capable of. Yet while parts such as the coarse-tongued grandad Edwin Hoover in and ’s tough-talking producer Lester Siegel fit him like a glove, earning him an Oscar in the first instance and an Oscar nomination in the second, he was in truth a far more versatile talent, as capable of projecting sinister menace and comedic desperation as he was at dispensing worldly wisdom or conveying world-weary resignation.
