Veteran actor not ready to take it easy

In 2003, Hollywood icon Alan Alda, who spent years playing a surgeon on TV's "M*A*S*H," found himself on a Chilean operating room table, staring death in the face. He had been rushed to the hospital after suffering an attack of appendicitis while working on a TV documentary in a remote village.

"They had to carry me down from the mountain," recalls the veteran actor. "If they hadn't gotten me into the O.R. when they did, I'd have died."

The health scare had a profound effect on Alda.

After recovering from the surgery, he grew introspective and decided it was time to ponder the big questions of life. He wrote a memoir called "Never Have Your Dog Stuffed, and Other Things I've Learned," which was published in 2005.

"You really start to think about what your life adds up to, and whatever time I have left now is all for free, it's a bonus," he says.

Publishing a best-seller was just the start of a phenomenal year for Alda. He earned an Oscar nomination for his supporting role in "The Aviator," an Emmy nomination for NBC's "The West Wing" and a Tony nomination for his performance in the Broadway revival of "Glengarry Glen Ross."

The 71-year-old actor isn't slowing down, either.

He has written another book, slated to hit stores in September, called "Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself." In this second memoir, he examines the advice he had been dispensing at college commencement ceremonies over the years.

And he has a new movie out, "Resurrecting the Champ," in which he plays Metz, a hard-driving sports editor. Metz feels one of his reporters, Erik Kernan (Josh Hartnett), isn't cutting it. Lacking confidence in the young writer, he gives him the worst assignments and buries his stories. Kernan resents Metz and goes over his head with what he believes to be a killer story about a one-time heavyweight boxing contender who's fallen on hard times.

Alda said he liked "Resurrecting the Champ's" message about the necessity for ethics in journalism.

"That's what interested me most about this picture," he says. "It's not because I hold the press in low regard. On the contrary, I personally depend on the press, not necessarily when they're interviewing Paris Hilton, but when they're passing on news that affects my life and my grandchildren's lives."

Born in New York, Alda began his career in the 1950s as a member of a comedy review. In 1966, he starred in the musical "The Apple Tree" on Broadway, where he was nominated for his first Tony.

He came to prominence as Army surgeon Hawkeye Pierce on the TV adaptation of "M*A*S*H," which debuted in 1972. The show, about a military medical unit during the Korean War, was a groundbreaking critical and popular hit. During its 11-year run, Alda earned 21 Emmy nominations and took home five awards. He wrote and directed many of the episodes as well.

Alda has starred in dozens of movies, including "The Seduction of Joe Tynan," "Flirting with Disaster," "Same Time Next Year," "California Suite" and "What Women Want." He's also hosted the award-winning PBS series "Scientific American Frontiers" for 11 years.

Over the years, Alda has bounced back and forth between Broadway and Hollywood. Working continuously appears to suit him.

"I'm monumentally distractible," he says. "In order to do something useful, I have to get obsessed with it."