Mankiewicz was born in Los Angeles on June 1, 1942. His parents were Austrian-born actress Rose Stradner and the celebrated screenwriter/director Joseph L. Mankiewicz, son of German-Jewish immigrants. In 1950, his father, after winning four Oscars in two years for the screenplays and direction of A Letter to Three Wives and All About Eve, decided to move his family back to New York City, where he had been raised.
Mankiewicz was a graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy (1955–1959) and Yale College (1959–1963). He majored in drama at Yale, completing the first two years of the Yale Drama School while still an undergraduate. His mother committed suicide in 1958, when Mankiewicz was 16 years old.
During vacations he worked at the Williamstown Summer Theater in Massachusetts both in production and as an actor. In 1961, he was hired as a third assistant director on The Comancheros, a film starring John Wayne and Lee Marvin, which was shot in the Monument Valley of Utah, the last film directed by Michael Curtiz. Wayne told Mankiewicz to remove his John F. Kennedy button.

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