Ben Gazzara

Infobox actor
title = Ben Gazzara


caption = Photograph by Carl van Vechten, 1955
birthname = Biagio Anthony Gazzara
birthdate = birth date and age|1930|8|28
location = New York City, New York, USA
spouse = Louise Erickson (1951-1957)
Janice Rule (1961-1979)
Elke Krivat (1982-present)
emmyawards = Outstanding Supporting Actor - Miniseries/Movie
2003 "Hysterical Blindness"

Biagio Anthony “Ben” Gazzara (born August 28, 1930) is an American actor in television and motion pictures.

Biography

Early life

Gazzara was born in New York City, the son of Italian immigrants Angelina (née Cusumano) and Antonio Gazzara, who was a laborer. [cite web | title=Ben Gazzara Biography | url=http://www.filmreference.com/film/24/Ben-Gazzara.html | work=filmreference | year=2008 | accessdate=2008-04-04] Gazzara grew up on New York's tough Lower East Side. He attended New York City's famed Stuyvesant High School. [cite magazine |url=http://www.cigaraficionado.com/Cigar/CA_Profiles/People_Profile/0,2540,54,00.html |title= Running Cool - Ben Gazzara's Long Stage and Screen Career has Included a Love Affair with a Good Smoke |journal=Cigar Aficionado |first=Mervyn |last=Rothstein |accessdate=2007-11-01] He found relief from his bleak surroundings by joining a theater company at a very young age. Years later, he saidFact|date=October 2008 that the discovery of his love for acting saved him from a life of crime during his teen years. Despite his obvious talent, he went to City College of New York to study electrical engineering. After two years, he relented, and after a short intermission, he joined the Actors Studio.

Career

In the 1950s, Gazzara starred in various Broadway productions, most notably Tennessee Williams' "Cat On A Hot Tin Roof", directed by Elia Kazan. However, he lost out on the film role to Paul Newman. He was nominated three times for the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play—in 1956 for "A Hatful of Rain", in 1975 for the paired short plays "Hughie" and "Duet", and in 1977 for a revival of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" opposite Colleen Dewhurst.

Gazzara has had a long and varied acting career, with spells as an accomplished director, mostly in television. He joined other Actors Studio members in the 1957 film "The Strange One". Then came a high-profile performance as a soldier on trial for avenging his wife's rape in Otto Preminger's 1959 classic courtroom drama "Anatomy of a Murder".

Subsequent screen credits included "The Young Doctors" (1961), "A Rage to Live" (1965), "The Bridge at Remagen" (1969), "Capone" (1975), "Voyage of the Damned" (1976), and "High Velocity" (1976).

Gazzara became well-known in a couple of television series, beginning with "Arrest and Trial", which ran from 1963 to 1964 on ABC, and the more-successful series "Run for Your Life" from 1965 to 1968 on NBC, in which he played a terminally ill man trying to get the most out of the last two years of his life.

Some of the actor's most-formidable characters were those he created with his friend John Cassavetes in the 1970s. They collaborated for the first time on Cassavetes's film "Husbands" (1970), in which he appeared alongside Peter Falk and Cassavetes himself. In "The Killing of a Chinese Bookie", Gazzara took the leading role of the hapless strip-joint owner, Cosmo Vitelli. A year later, Gazzara starred in yet another Cassavetes-directed movie, "Opening Night", as stage director Manny Victor, who struggles with the mentally unstable star of his show, played by Cassavetes's wife Gena Rowlands.

In the 1980s, Gazzara could be seen in a variety of movies, such as "Saint Jack" and "They All Laughed" (both directed by Peter Bogdanovich), and in a villainous role in the oft-televised Patrick Swayze film "Road House", which the actor jokingly says is probably his most-watched performance. He starred with Rowlands in a controversial and critically acclaimed AIDS-themed TV movie "An Early Frost" (1985).

Very much in demand for supporting parts, Gazzara appeared in thirty-eight films—many for TV—in the 1990s. He worked with a number of renowned directors, such as the Coen Brothers ("The Big Lebowski"), Spike Lee ("Summer of Sam"), David Mamet ("The Spanish Prisoner"), Walter Hugo Khouri ("Forever"), Todd Solondz ("Happiness"), John Turturro ("Illuminata"), and John McTiernan ("The Thomas Crown Affair").

In his seventies, Gazzara continues to be active. In 2003, he was in the ensemble cast of the experimental film "Dogville", directed by Lars von Trier of Denmark and starring Nicole Kidman. Several other projects have recently been completed or are currently in production. In 2005, he played Agostino Casaroli in the TV miniseries "Pope John Paul II".

Personal life

Gazzara was diagnosed with throat cancer in 1999. He lost more than 40 pounds during treatment.

He has been married three times. First to Louise Erickson (1951–1957), then actress Janice Rule (1961–1979), and finally Elke Krivat (sometimes listed as Elke Stuckmann) since 1982.

In his 2004 autobiography, "In the Moment: My Life as an Actor," the actor recounts his love affair with actress Audrey Hepburn. They co-starred in two of her final films, "Bloodline" (1979) and "They All Laughed" (1981).

Friend of Robert Vaughn, who played Napoleon Solo on "The Man From U.N.C.L.E.". During filming in Czechoslovakia of the big-budget war movie "The Bridge at Remagen" with co-stars Robert Vaughn, Bradford Dillman and George Segal, Gazzara was placed under house arrest during the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. He and friend Robert Vaughn planned a daring escape of a Czechoslovakian translator who wanted to defect to the West and ultimately the U.S. This adventure rivaled anything Napoleon Solo would have attempted on "The Man From U.N.C.L.E.".

References

External links

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