40 Facts About Eli Wallach

Eli Herschel Wallach was an American film, television, and stage actor from New York City.

Eli Wallach initially studied method acting under Sanford Meisner and later became a founding member of the Actors Studio, where he studied under Lee Strasberg.

Eli Wallach played a wide variety of roles throughout his career, primarily as a supporting actor.

One of America's most prolific screen actors, Eli Wallach remained active well into his nineties, with roles as late as 2010 in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps and The Ghost Writer.

In 1988, Eli Wallach was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.

Eli Wallach received BAFTA Awards, Tony Awards and Emmy Awards, and an Academy Honorary Award at the second annual Governors Awards on November 13,2010.

Eli Herschel Wallach was born on December 7,1915, at 156 Union Street in Red Hook, Brooklyn, a son of Polish Jewish immigrants Abraham and Bertha Wallach from Przemysl.

Eli Wallach graduated in 1936 from the University of Texas with a degree in history.

Eli Wallach gained his first method acting experience at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in New York City, where he studied under Sanford Meisner.

Eli Wallach's education was cut short when he was drafted into the United States Army in 1940.

Eli Wallach served as a staff sergeant and medic in a military hospital in Hawaii and later was sent to Officer Candidate School in Abilene, Texas, to train as a medical administrative officer.

Eli Wallach was discharged as a captain following the war's end in 1945.

Eli Wallach took classes in acting at the Dramatic Workshop of the New School in New York City with the influential German director Erwin Piscator.

Eli Wallach later became a founding member of the Actors Studio, taught by Lee Strasberg.

Eli Wallach became friends with his wife, Anne Jackson, studying at the Studio, and would visit the couple at their home and sometimes babysit their new child.

In 1945 Eli Wallach made his Broadway debut and he won a Tony Award in 1951 for his performance alongside Maureen Stapleton in the Tennessee Williams play The Rose Tattoo.

Eli Wallach played a role in a tour of Antony and Cleopatra, produced by the actress Katharine Cornell in 1946.

Eli Wallach exposed Americans to the work of playwright Eugene Ionesco in plays including The Chairs and The Lesson in 1958, and in 1961 Rhinoceros opposite Zero Mostel.

Eli Wallach last starred on stage as the title character in Visiting Mr Green.

Eli Wallach recalls they were getting along on unemployment insurance and living in a one-room, $35 a month apartment on lower Fifth Avenue in the Village.

Eli Wallach said that the stage was what attracted him most and what he "needed" to do.

Eli Wallach went on to a prolific career as "one of the greatest 'character actors' ever to appear on stage and screen", notes Turner Classic Movies, acting in over 90 films.

In 1961, Eli Wallach co-starred with Marilyn Monroe, Montgomery Clift and Clark Gable in The Misfits, Monroe's and Gable's last film before their deaths.

Eli Wallach never learned why he was cast in the film, although he suspected that Monroe had something to do with it.

Eli Wallach said "Yes, you'll enjoy the challenge", and Fonda later thanked Eli Wallach for that advice.

However, Wallach had previously been offered an important role in another Tennessee Williams play, Camino Real, to be directed by Elia Kazan, and turned down the movie role.

In 2006 Eli Wallach appeared on NBC's Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, playing a former writer who was blacklisted in the 1950s.

Eli Wallach's character was a writer on The Philco Comedy Hour, a show that aired on a fictional NBS network.

Eli Wallach earned a 2007 Emmy nomination for his work on the show.

Once, he accidentally drank a bottle of acid which was placed next to his pop bottle; another time was in a scene where he was about to be hanged, someone fired a pistol which caused the horse underneath him to bolt and run while Eli Wallach's hands were still tied behind his back; in a different scene with him lying on a railroad track, he was close to being decapitated by steps jutting out from the train.

Eli Wallach appeared as DC Comics' supervillain Mr Freeze in the 1960s Batman television series.

Eli Wallach said that he received more fan mail about his role as Mr Freeze than for all his other roles combined.

Eli Wallach played Gus Farber in the television miniseries Seventh Avenue in 1977, and 10 years later, at the age of 71, he starred alongside Michael Landon in Highway to Heaven episode "A Father's Faith".

On November 13,2010, at the age of 94, Eli Wallach received an Academy Honorary Award for his contribution to the film industry from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Eli Wallach plays a Holocaust survivor who, in a meeting, teaches a self-consumed and preoccupied young man that life can change in a moment.

Eli Wallach was married to stage actress Anne Jackson for 66 years from March 5,1948, until his death.

Eli Wallach was a strict teetotaler and once asked the director John Huston for advice on how to play a "drunk" scene during the filming of The Misfits.

Eli Wallach's niece is the historian Joan Wallach Scott.

Eli Wallach died on June 24,2014, of natural causes at the age of 98.

Katherine Eli Wallach told The New York Times that Anne Jackson died on April 12,2016, aged 90, at her home in Manhattan.