Nebbish

Actor Rick Moranis often plays a nebbish.

“I don't consider myself a nebbish,” Woody told interviewers early in his career, “but everyone else does.”

But as Lisa Schwarzbaum, the former movie critic for Entertainment Weekly, pointed out in an email interview, “‘Manhattan’ was always about a middle-aged man with a high school girlfriend. Back then, ‘Manhattan’ was made by Woody the Lovable Neurotic Nebbish, and now it has been made by Allen the Monster. And it’s the same movie.”

“Having a camera in my hands transformed a nebbish into someone who could make New York into a better place,” he said. “To help others do the same is important to us.”