25 Facts About Uta Hagen

1.

Uta Thyra Hagen was a German-American actress and theatre practitioner.

FactSnippet No. 768,111
2.

Uta Hagen's later became a highly influential acting teacher at New York's Herbert Berghof Studio and authored best-selling acting texts, Respect for Acting, with Haskel Frankel, and A Challenge for the Actor.

FactSnippet No. 768,112
3.

Uta Hagen's was elected to the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1981.

FactSnippet No. 768,113
4.

Uta Hagen's twice won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play and received a Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1999.

FactSnippet No. 768,114
5.

Uta Hagen's appeared in productions of the University of Wisconsin High School and in summer stock productions of the Wisconsin Players.

FactSnippet No. 768,115
6.

Uta Hagen's studied acting briefly at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1936.

FactSnippet No. 768,116
7.

Uta Hagen was cast, early on, as Ophelia by the actress-manager Eva Le Gallienne.

FactSnippet No. 768,117
8.

Uta Hagen's played George Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan on Broadway, and Desdemona in a production which toured and played Broadway, featuring Paul Robeson as Shakespeare's Othello and her then-husband Jose Ferrer as Iago.

FactSnippet No. 768,118
9.

Uta Hagen's took over the role of Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire for the national tour, which was directed not by Elia Kazan who had directed the Broadway production but by Harold Clurman.

FactSnippet No. 768,119
10.

Uta Hagen had had a revelatory experience when she first worked with Clurman in 1947.

FactSnippet No. 768,120
11.

Primarily noted for stage roles, Uta Hagen won her first Tony Award in 1951 for her performance as the self-sacrificing wife Georgie in Clifford Odets' The Country Girl.

FactSnippet No. 768,121
12.

Uta Hagen's was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award as "Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series" for her performance on the television soap opera One Life to Live.

FactSnippet No. 768,122
13.

Uta Hagen's taught at HB Studio, a well-known New York City acting school on a cobblestone, tree-shaded street in the West Village.

FactSnippet No. 768,123
14.

Uta Hagen's began there in 1947, and married its co-founder, Herbert Berghof, on 25 January 1957.

FactSnippet No. 768,124
15.

Later in her life, Uta Hagen undertook a return to the stage, earning accolades for leading roles in Mrs Warren's Profession, Collected Stories, and Mrs Klein.

FactSnippet No. 768,125
16.

Uta Hagen was an influential acting teacher who taught, among others, Matthew Broderick, Christine Lahti, Amanda Peet, Jason Robards, Sigourney Weaver, Katie Finneran, Liza Minnelli, Whoopi Goldberg, Jack Lemmon, Charles Nelson Reilly, Manu Tupou, Debbie Allen, Herschel Savage, George Segal, Jon Stewart, and Al Pacino.

FactSnippet No. 768,126
17.

Uta Hagen's was a voice coach to Judy Garland, teaching a German accent, for the picture Judgment at Nuremberg.

FactSnippet No. 768,127
18.

Uta Hagen's wrote Respect for Acting and A Challenge for the Actor, which advocate realistic acting .

FactSnippet No. 768,128
19.

In Respect for Acting, Uta Hagen credited director Harold Clurman with a turn-around in her perspective on acting:.

FactSnippet No. 768,129
20.

Uta Hagen opened a new world in the professional theatre for me.

FactSnippet No. 768,130
21.

Uta Hagen imposed no line readings, no gestures, no positions on the actors.

FactSnippet No. 768,131
22.

Uta Hagen later "disassociated" herself from her first book, Respect for Acting.

FactSnippet No. 768,132
23.

In 2001, Hagen agreed to be filmed giving master classes in NYC, LA, Toronto and Chicago by Karen Ludwig and Pennie du Pont, who released the video entitled Uta Hagen's Acting Class, a two-part set that captures her master classes.

FactSnippet No. 768,133
24.

Uta Hagen married Herbert Berghof on 25 January 1957, a union that lasted for 33 years until his death in 1990.

FactSnippet No. 768,134
25.

Uta Hagen died in Greenwich Village in 2004 after suffering a stroke in 2001.

FactSnippet No. 768,135