Milton Katselas
Encyclopedia
Milton Katselas was an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 film director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...

 and famous Hollywood coach for The Beverly Hills Playhouse. He taught such stars as Gene Hackman
Gene Hackman
Eugene Allen "Gene" Hackman is an American actor and novelist.Nominated for five Academy Awards, winning two, Hackman has also won three Golden Globes and two BAFTAs in a career that spanned five decades. He first came to fame in 1967 with his performance as Buck Barrow in Bonnie and Clyde...

, Jason Beghe
Jason Beghe
Jason Beghe is an American film and television actor and critic of Scientology. As a young man he attended the Collegiate School in New York City, where he became best friends with John F. Kennedy, Jr. and David Duchovny. Beghe is married and lives in Los Angeles, California.Beghe starred in the...

, Jenna Elfman
Jenna Elfman
Jennifer Mary "Jenna" Elfman is an American television and film actress. She is known for her role as Dharma on the ABC sitcom Dharma & Greg and as Billie on the short-lived CBS sitcom Accidentally on Purpose....

, George Clooney
George Clooney
George Timothy Clooney is an American actor, film director, producer, and screenwriter. For his work as an actor, he has received two Golden Globe Awards and an Academy Award...

, Alec Baldwin
Alec Baldwin
Alexander Rae "Alec" Baldwin III is an American actor who has appeared on film, stage, and television.Baldwin first gained recognition through television for his work in the soap opera Knots Landing in the role of Joshua Rush. He was a cast member for two seasons before his character was killed off...

, Giovanni Ribisi
Giovanni Ribisi
Giovanni Ribisi is an American actor. His film credits include Gone in 60 Seconds, Boiler Room, Saving Private Ryan, The Mod Squad, The Gift, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Lost in Translation and more recently, Public Enemies and Avatar...

, Tom Selleck
Tom Selleck
Thomas William "Tom" Selleck is an American actor, and film producer. He is best known for his starring role as Hawaii-based private investigator Thomas Magnum on the 1980s television show Magnum, P.I.. He also plays Police Chief Jesse Stone in a series of made-for-TV movies based on the Robert B....

, Michelle Pfeiffer
Michelle Pfeiffer
Michelle Marie Pfeiffer is an American actress. She made her film debut in 1980 in The Hollywood Knights, but first garnered mainstream attention with her performance in Brian De Palma's Scarface . Pfeiffer has won numerous awards for her work...

, Ted Danson
Ted Danson
Edward Bridge “Ted” Danson III is an American actor best known for his role as central character Sam Malone in the sitcom Cheers, and his role as Dr. John Becker on the series Becker. He also plays a recurring role on Larry David's HBO sitcom Curb Your Enthusiasm and starred alongside Glenn Close...

, Tony Danza
Tony Danza
Tony Danza is an American actor best known for starring on the TV series Taxi and Who's the Boss?, for which he was nominated for an Emmy Award and four Golden Globe Awards...

, Jeffrey Tambor
Jeffrey Tambor
Jeffrey Michael Tambor is an American actor, perhaps best known for his roles as George Bluth Sr. and Oscar Bluth on Arrested Development and Hank Kingsley on The Larry Sanders Show.-Early life:...

, Gene Reynolds
Gene Reynolds
Gene Reynolds is a former American actor turned award-winning television writer, director, and producer.-Early life:He was born Eugene Reynolds Blumenthal on April 4, 1923 to Frank Eugene Blumenthal and Maude Evelyn Blumenthal in Cleveland, Ohio, he was raised in Detroit, Michigan, where his...

, Tyne Daly
Tyne Daly
Tyne Daly is an American stage and screen actress, widely known for her work as Detective Mary Beth Lacey in the television series Cagney & Lacey and as Maxine Gray in the television series Judging Amy. She is also known for her role as Alice Henderson in television series Christy...

, Mel Harris
Mel Harris
Mel Harris is an American actress.-Personal life:Harris was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, the daughter to Mary Michael "Mike", a high school science teacher, and Warren Harris, a university football coach...

, Catherine Bell
Catherine Bell
Catherine Lisa Bell is an American actress known for her role of Lieutenant Colonel Sarah MacKenzie of the television show JAG from 1997 to 2005...

, Sofia Milos
Sofia Milos
Sofia Milos is an Italian/Greek actress. She is best known for her role as Yelina Salas on CSI: Miami.Milos was born in Zurich, Switzerland, to an Italian father and a Greek mother. In her teens she entered a local beauty pageant, and after winning first prize went on to win the provincial,...

, Elizabeth Sung
Elizabeth Sung
Elizabeth Fong Sung is an Asian American actress and film director.From 1994-96, she appeared on the American soap opera The Young and the Restless as Luan Volien....

 and others.

Biography

Milton George Katsalas was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh is the second-largest city in the US Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Allegheny County. Regionally, it anchors the largest urban area of Appalachia and the Ohio River Valley, and nationally, it is the 22nd-largest urban area in the United States...

 to Greek immigrant parents, who owned a small restaurant outside the gates of a Westinghouse Electric plant. When Milton was 14 years old, his father went into the movie theater
Movie theater
A movie theater, cinema, movie house, picture theater, film theater is a venue, usually a building, for viewing motion pictures ....

 business and ran a local theater company of Greek actors. Milton Katsalas later adjusted his surname to Katselas.

After high school, he set off for Pittsburgh's Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie Mellon) to study theater. On a visit to New York, he sneaked in to watch Lee Strasberg
Lee Strasberg
Lee Strasberg was an American actor, director and acting teacher. He cofounded, with directors Harold Clurman and Cheryl Crawford, the Group Theatre in 1931, which was hailed as "America's first true theatrical collective"...

's acting class where he also saw renowned director Elia Kazan
Elia Kazan
Elia Kazan was an American director and actor, described by the New York Times as "one of the most honored and influential directors in Broadway and Hollywood history". Born in Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, to Greek parents originally from Kayseri in Anatolia, the family emigrated...

 on the street and chased him down. "I talked to him in Greek, and he talked with me"... [H]e told me, `When you finish college, come see me.'", Katselas recalled. Following graduation in 1954, he began studying with Strasberg
Lee Strasberg
Lee Strasberg was an American actor, director and acting teacher. He cofounded, with directors Harold Clurman and Cheryl Crawford, the Group Theatre in 1931, which was hailed as "America's first true theatrical collective"...

 and serving as an apprentice to Kazan.

After working with several other big-name directors, including Joshua Logan
Joshua Logan
Joshua Lockwood Logan III was an American stage and film director and writer.-Early years:Logan was born in Texarkana, Texas, the son of Susan and Joshua Lockwood Logan. When he was three years old his father committed suicide...

, Joseph Anthony
Joseph Anthony
Joseph Anthony was an American playwright, actor, and director. He made his film acting debut in the 1934 film Hat, Coat, and Glove and his theatrical acting debut in a 1935 production of Mary of Scotland...

, and Sanford Meisner
Sanford Meisner
Sanford Meisner , also known as Sandy, was an American actor and acting teacher who developed a form of Method acting that is now known as the Meisner technique....

, Katselas struck out on his own, beginning with the original 1960 Off-Broadway
Off-Broadway
Off-Broadway theater is a term for a professional venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, and for a specific production of a play, musical or revue that appears in such a venue, and which adheres to related trade union and other contracts...

 production of Edward Albee
Edward Albee
Edward Franklin Albee III is an American playwright who is best known for The Zoo Story , The Sandbox , Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? , and a rewrite of the screenplay for the unsuccessful musical version of Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's . His works are considered well-crafted, often...

's The Zoo Story
The Zoo Story
Not to be confused with Zoo Story: Life in the Garden of Captives the book about Lowry Park ZooThe Zoo Story is American playwright Edward Albee's first play; written in 1958 and completed in just three weeks...

. This was followed by another critical success the following year, Michael Shurtleff
Michael Shurtleff
Michael Shurtleff was a major force in casting on Broadway during the 1960s and 1970s. He wrote Audition, a book for actors on the audition process...

's Call Me By My Rightful Name
Call Me By My Rightful Name
Call Me By My Rightful Name is an American play by Michael Shurtleff which is based on a story by S.F. Pfoutz. The production premiered Off-Broadway on January 31, 1961 at the One Sheridan Square theatre where it ran for a total of 127 performances...

. He was nominated for a Tony Award
Tony Award
The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as a Tony Award, recognizes achievement in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City. The awards are given for Broadway...

 for the Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...

 production of Leonard Gershe
Leonard Gershe
Leonard Gershe was an American playwright, screenwriter, and lyricist.Born in New York City, Gershe made his Broadway debut as a lyricist for the 1950 revue Alive and Kicking. He wrote the book for Harold Rome's musical stage adaptation of Destry Rides Again in 1959, and in 1969 a play, ...

's Butterflies Are Free
Butterflies Are Free
Butterflies Are Free is a 1972 film based on a play by Leonard Gershe. The 1972 film was produced by M.J. Frankovich, released by Columbia Pictures, directed by Milton Katselas and adapted for the screen by Gershe. It was released on 6 July, 1972 in the USA.Goldie Hawn and Edward Albert starred...

in 1969, and also directed the 1972 movie version starring Goldie Hawn
Goldie Hawn
Goldie Jeanne Hawn is an American actress, film director, producer, and occasional singer. Hawn is known for her roles in Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, Private Benjamin, Foul Play, Overboard, Bird on a Wire, Death Becomes Her, The First Wives Club, and Cactus Flower, for which she won the 1969...

, Edward Albert
Edward Albert
Edward Albert was an American film and television actor. He was also known as Edward Laurence Albert, Laurence Edward Albert and occasionally Eddie Albert, Jr.-Early life:Albert was born Edward Laurence Heimberger in Los Angeles, California, to actor Eddie...

, and Eileen Heckart
Eileen Heckart
Eileen Heckart was an American actress of stage, screen, and television.-Early life:Heckart was born Anna Eileen Heckart in Columbus, Ohio, the daughter of Esther and Leo Herbert. She was legally adopted by her grandfather, J.W. Heckart. Her family was of Irish and German descent...

, who won an Academy Award for her role.

In 1973 he reunited with Gershe and Albert for the film version of 40 Carats
Forty Carats
Forty Carats is a play by Jay Allen.Adapted from the French original by Pierre Barillet and Jean-Pierre Gredy, the comedy revolves around a 40-year-old American divorcee who is assisted by a 22-year-old when her car breaks down during a vacation in Greece...

. His other credits include the Broadway shows Camino Real
Camino Real (play)
Camino Real is a 1953 play by Tennessee Williams. In the introduction to the Penguin edition of the play, Williams directs the reader to use the Anglicized pronunciation "Cá-mino Réal." The play takes its title from its setting, alluded to El Camino Real, a dead-end place in a Spanish-speaking town...

and The Rose Tattoo
The Rose Tattoo
- External links :*...

, local productions of The Seagull
The Seagull
The Seagull is the first of what are generally considered to be the four major plays by the Russian dramatist Anton Chekhov. The Seagull was written in 1895 and first produced in 1896...

, Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written early in the career of playwright William Shakespeare about two young star-crossed lovers whose deaths ultimately unite their feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's most popular archetypal stories of young, teenage lovers.Romeo and Juliet belongs to a...

, and Streamers
Streamers
Streamers is a play by David Rabe. After premiering at the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut in 1975, the production transferred to Broadway, opening on April 21, 1976 at Lincoln Center's Mitzi E. Newhouse Theatre, where it ran for 478 performances...

- all of which won him L.A.
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...

 Drama Critics Circle
awards for best direction.

In 1983, Katselas directed a revival of Noel Coward
Noël Coward
Sir Noël Peirce Coward was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise".Born in Teddington, a suburb of London, Coward attended a dance academy...

's Private Lives
Private Lives
Private Lives is a 1930 comedy of manners in three acts by Noël Coward. It focuses on a divorced couple who discover that they are honeymooning with their new spouses in neighbouring rooms at the same hotel. Despite a perpetually stormy relationship, they realise that they still have feelings for...

, the only Broadway stage production in which Elizabeth Taylor
Elizabeth Taylor
Dame Elizabeth Rosemond "Liz" Taylor, DBE was a British-American actress. From her early years as a child star with MGM, she became one of the great screen actresses of Hollywood's Golden Age...

 and Richard Burton
Richard Burton
Richard Burton, CBE was a Welsh actor. He was nominated seven times for an Academy Award, six of which were for Best Actor in a Leading Role , and was a recipient of BAFTA, Golden Globe and Tony Awards for Best Actor. Although never trained as an actor, Burton was, at one time, the highest-paid...

 co-starred together. However, after the show was panned in its Boston tryout, Taylor, who was a producer, fired Katselas, yet he retained his directing credit for the Broadway run. He also directed the screen adaptation of Mark Medoff
Mark Medoff
Mark Medoff is an American playwright, screenwriter, film and theatre director, actor, and professor. His play Children of a Lesser God received both the Tony Award and the Olivier Award...

's When You Comin' Back, Red Ryder?.

Katselas was active as a writer, painter and acting teacher for over twenty years. He wrote a book titled Dreams Into Action which garnered international attention and has appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show
Oprah Winfrey
Oprah Winfrey is an American media proprietor, talk show host, actress, producer and philanthropist. Winfrey is best known for her self-titled, multi-award-winning talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind in history and was nationally syndicated from 1986 to 2011...

discussing the book's success. He also wrote "Acting Class: Take a Seat" which is the acting class book of the Beverly Hills Playhouse
Beverly Hills Playhouse
The Beverly Hills Playhouse is one of the oldest acting schools and theatres in Los Angeles. Located at 254 South Robertson Boulevard in Beverly Hills, California, United States.-The early years:...

.

He was a long-time Scientologist
Scientology
Scientology is a body of beliefs and related practices created by science fiction and fantasy author L. Ron Hubbard , starting in 1952, as a successor to his earlier self-help system, Dianetics...

, having been introduced to it in 1965, and had attained the Scientology state of Operating Thetan
Operating Thetan
In Scientology, the state of Operating Thetan is a spiritual state above Clear. L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, defined it as "knowing and willing cause over life, thought, matter, energy, space and time ". According to religious scholar J...

. A number of Hollywood celebrities were introduced to Scientology by means of Katselas' acting workshops.

In 2007, he was the victim of a mass email sent by Grant Cardone
Grant Cardone
Grant Cardone is a motivational speaker, and author, and host of the National Geographic television show, ‘Turnaround King’....

 attacking him on behalf of the Church of Scientology
Church of Scientology
The Church of Scientology is an organization devoted to the practice and the promotion of the Scientology belief system. The Church of Scientology International is the Church of Scientology's parent organization, and is responsible for the overall ecclesiastical management, dissemination and...

. According to Allen Barton, the owner of the Beverly Hills Playhouse, beginning in 2004, Scientologist actors began leaving the Playhouse, and by 2007, there were no Scientologists left there.

Katselas died of heart failure on October 24, 2008, aged 74, at the Los Angeles hospital Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
Originally established as Kaspare Cohn Hospital in 1902, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center is a non-profit, tertiary 958-bed hospital and multi-specialty academic health science centre located in Los Angeles, California, US. Part of the Cedars-Sinai Health System, the hospital employs a staff of over...

.

Katselas will be portrayed by actor James Franco
James Franco
James Edward Franco is an American actor, film director, producer, screenwriter, author, painter, performance artist and instructor at New York University. He left college in order to pursue acting and started off his career by making guest appearances on television series in the 1990s...

 in the upcoming Sal Mineo
Sal Mineo
Salvatore "Sal" Mineo, Jr. , was an American film and theatre actor, best known for his performance as John "Plato" Crawford opposite James Dean in the film Rebel Without a Cause...

biopic, Sal. Franco will also direct.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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