Barry Levinson was born on April 6, 1942 in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Precisely his homeland and Russian-Jewish roots would inspire one of his most personal films, Avalon (1990), which has a nostalgic point of view provided by a child, played by the then-promising Elijah Wood.

The future screenwriter and director studied at the School of Communication at the American University in Washington, but the adventure got the better of him, and he went to Los Angeles ready to try his luck as an actor and screenwriter; for this he entered the world of varieties. Witty and imaginative, he made his way writing sketches for Martin Feldman and Carol Burnett's television shows.

Mel Brooks was able to appreciate Levinson's talent, and collaborated with him to film two of his scripts, The Last Madness of Mel Brooks (1976) and Maximum Anxiety (1977). With his first wife, Valerie Curtin, to whom he was married between 1975 and 1982, he wrote the screenplay for Justice for All (Norman Jewison, 1979), a work for which both were nominated for an Oscar. The conjugal work of writing would give rise to the scripts of Very Intimate Friends (Norman Jewison, 1982) and Unfaithfully Yours (Howard Zieff, 1984), a remake of the film of the same name by Preston Sturges. The couple also signed the script for Max's Bar (Richard Donner, 1981), a film imbued with a nostalgia that was immediately transferred to Levinson's first films as a director. This is the case of Diner (1982), where five friends who usually meet in a joint at the end of the 50's must think about growing up. Levinson signed the script alone and was nominated for an Oscar. After his divorce, he would marry Diana Rhodes, who already had two children, and with whom he had another two.

Nostalgia is present again in The Best (1984), set in the world of baseball and more commercial, where he films a foreign script with heavyweights like Robert Redford, Glen Close and Kim Basinger. There is also nostalgia in the youthful adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson in The Secret of the Pyramid (1985), where the libretto, which is not part of the Arthur Conan Doyle novels, is provided by Chris Columbus.

In 1987 he returned to managing his own script in the comedy Two Swindlers and a Woman, and a stranger in Good Morning, Vietnam, more successful films, with an immeasurable Robin Williams as a crazy radio announcer who, without mincing words, encourages the American soldiers in Vietnam. In any case, the ground is more than fertile for Hollywood to surrender at his feet, rewarding him as director in the multi-Oscar-winning Rain Man (1988), which also won best picture in addition to giving the jackpot to Dustin Hoffman as Tom Cruise's autistic brother in an endearing film that perfectly combines drama and comedy; the tape would also take the Golden Bear in Berlin.

Recently “crowned” he can allow himself to work as a producer in a film as personal as Avalon (1990) – his script is up for an Oscar – or in the audacious and little understood Toys (1992), nostalgia for childhood and innocent toys . Instead, although he counts for the Oscars, Bugsy (1991), a biopic of the famous gangster Bugsy Siegel with Warren Beatty and Annette Benning, is too cold. From this moment on, he will produce his films as director, and also those of others such as La princesita (Alfonso Cuarón, 1995) and Donnie Brasco (Mike Newell, 1997), or television series such as Homicide (series).

The Spanish Victoria Abril starred with Joe Pesci in Jimmy Hollywood (1994), a true fiasco. Levinson clings to safe values, and puts his professionalism at the service of the adaptation of two best-sellers by Michael Crichton, Harassment (1994) and Sphere (1998). Instead, he risks more with Sleepers (1996), where he himself carries out the adaptation of Lorenzo Carcaterra's harsh autobiographical memories, about his gang in New York in the 1960s and the abuses in a correctional facility; longing is thus still present in Levinson's cinema. There is also courage in the political satire The Smoke Screen (1997), where he coincides with Dustin Hoffman for the third time, and in which clothes do not hurt when collaborating with a prestigious screenwriter such as playwright and director David Mamet. .

From this moment the star Levinson declines, he continues to make good films, but is not in the forefront. Liberty Heights (1999) follows his nostalgic streak, but without the shine of yesteryear. Bandits (2001) is funny, but decidedly Envy (2004) and The Man of the Year (2006) –with his second favorite actor, Robin William, the other being Dustin Hoffman– do not allow us to recognize the filmmaker that he was. He is more in tune in Something Happens in Hollywood (2008), a new association with Robert De Niro after The Smoke Screen, and it is necessary to recognize his value in the story of the sinister Jack Kevorkian, Doctor Death, executor of euthanasia in the tv-movie You do not know to Jack (2010).

He is now about to release The Bay, an ecological thriller, and plans to travel through gangster territory again in a John Gotti biopic.