Introduction
Alexander Karpovsky is an American director, actor, screenwriter, producer and film editor. He is best known for playing Ray Ploshansky on the HBO comedy-drama series Girls and Craig Petrosian on the Amazon series Homecoming.
Early life and education
Alex Karpovsky was born in Newton, Massachusetts, USA on 23rd September 1975 in a Jewish family. He attended Boston University, where he graduated in 1997 as part of the University Professors Program. He pursued a DPhil (PhD) in visual ethnography at the University of Oxford, but dropped out after two years.
Career
His debut feature, The Hole Story, earned him a slot in Filmmaker magazine's 25 new faces of independent film. His subsequent feature-length films include Woodpecker (SXSW Film Festival, 2008), Trust Us, This Is All Made Up (SXSW Film Festival, 2009), Rubberneck (Tribeca Film Festival, 2012), and Red Flag (LA Film Festival, 2012), the latter two of which were released as a double feature in New York City's Lincoln Center Theater. In 2016 he directed an episode of Girls and in 2017 he directed an episode of Love.
As an actor, he played Ray Ploshansky in the HBO comedy series Girls and has portrayed characters in films that have been featured at Sundance, Cannes, SXSW, Berlinale, Los Angeles & Tribeca film festivals. Karpovsky also appeared in the Coen Brothers' most recent films, Inside Llewyn Davis and Hail, Caesar!, the latter of which was released in February 2016. Most recently, he was a series regular on Homecoming, which was released on Amazon in November 2018.
Karpovsky has read hundreds of stories for live and radio audiences, including NPR's Selected Shorts, The Paris Review, The New York Times' Modern Love, n+1, Grand Theft Auto IV, and This American Life.