Uta Hagen

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Uta Thyra Hagen (16 June 1919 – January 4, 2004) was an American actress and theatre performer.

Martha played Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf's 1962 Broadway debut. Edward Albee, who described her as "a deeply truthful actress."

Hagen's film opportunities diminished in part due to her relationship with Paul Robeson, and she concentrated her attention on New York theatre. She later became a well-known acting coach at Herbert Berghof Studio in New York, and she co-wrote Respect for Acting, with Haskel Frankel, and A Challenge to the Actor.

Konstantin Stanislavski and Yevgeny Vakhtangov's most important contributions to theatre pedagogy were a series of "object exercises" that extended Konstantin Stanislavski and Yevgeny Vakhtangov's career. In 1981, she was elected to the American Theatre Hall of Fame.

She twice received the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play and was also honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1999.

Personal life

Uta Hagen was married to José Ferrer from 1938 to 1948. They had one child together, their daughter Leticia (born 15 October 1940). They were divorced partially because of Hagen's long-awaited relationship with Paul Robeson, her co-star in Othello. Herbert Berghof was married on January 25, 1957, a union that lasted for 33 years until his death in 1990. Hagen died in Greenwich Village in 2004 after suffering a stroke in 2001.

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Life and career

Thyra A.'s daughter was born in Göttingen, Germany, the daughter of Thyra A. Oskar Hagen, an opera performer, and Anne Leisner, a trained opera singer, and Maria Leisner, an art historian and composer, immigrated to the United States in 1924. Although shipping records indicate that he obtained a Cornell University degree, his current position was at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Uta was born in Madison, Wisconsin. She appeared in the University of Wisconsin High School and in Wisconsin players' summer stock productions. In 1936, she studied briefly at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. She left for New York City in 1937 after spending one semester at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where her father was the head of the department of art history. In 1936, she was in Ophelia opposite Eva Le Gallienne in the title role of Hamlet in Dennis, Massachusetts.

Ophelia was first introduced by actress Eva Le Gallienne as a young child. Hagen went on to perform Nina in Anton Chekhov's The Seagull's Broadway production, which featured Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne. Hagen was only 18 years old at the time, and it was 1938. "My next job was Nina in The Seagull [her Broadway bow] with the Lunts on Broadway, which left an indelible mark on the young actress," she later said. That's incredibly strange. "They had a major influence on my life." She adored "their love for theatre" and their discipline. It was a 24-hour-a-day affair, and I never forgot it—never!" Brooks Atkinson, a New York Times columnist, praised her Nina as "grace and aspiration incarnate."

She appeared in Saint Joan (1951) on Broadway and Desdemona, starring Paul Robeson as Shakespeare's Othello and her then-husband José Ferrer as Iago. Blanche DuBois was the woman in A Streetcar Named Desire, but not by Elia Kazan who had directed the Broadway show but not by Harold Clurman. Hagen had a thrilling encounter when she first encountered Clurman in 1947. She credited her experiences with Clurman as the springboard for what she'll later investigate with her husband Herbert Berghof: "how to find a genuine style of acting, how to make a character flow through me." Blanche (on the road and on Broadway) appeared opposite at least four other Stanley Kowalskis, including Anthony Quinn and Marlon Brando. Hagen's Blanche refocused the audience's sympathy with Blanche rather than with Stanley, according to an interview with her and contemporaneous comment (where the Brando/Kazan production had leaned). Hagen gained her first Tony Award in 1951 for her role as Georgie, the self-sacrificing wife in Clifford Odets' The Country Girl, first and foremost. In 1963, she received a trophy for playing Martha in Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. In 1981, she was elected to the American Theater Hall of Fame, and in 1999 she received a "Special Lifetime Achievement Tony Award."

Hagen described the period between 1938 and 1947 as "the transitional years of my career," during which I lost my way and a passion of acting before I finally revived it to begin a life in the theater.

Although she appeared in some films, her Hollywood blacklist restricted her film and television production, not making her debut in 1972 until 1972. "I was pure" was the reason she later expressed her dissatisfaction with her being blacklisted.

"Outstanding Support Actress in a Drama Series" was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award for her appearance on the television soap opera "One Life to Live."

On a cobblestone, tree-shaded street in the West Village, she attended HB Studio, a well-known New York City acting school. Herbert Berghof, the company's co-founder, was born in 1947 and married her co-founder Herbert Berghof on January 25, 1957. Hagen returned to the stage later in her career, receiving accolades for her leading roles in Mrs. Warren's Profession (1985), Collected Stories, and Mrs. Klein. She became the school's chairperson after Berghof's death in 1990.

Hagen, a popular acting instructor who taught Matthew Broderick, Christine Lahti, Amanda Peet, Jason Robards, Sigourney Weaver, Katie Finneran, Whoopi Goldberg, Whoopi Goldberg, Russell Tupou, Manu Tupou, Jonathan Sutton, Manu Tupou, Manu Tupou, Manu Tupou, Manu Tupou, Mohamed Tabe, Johanna Minnelli, Jeanne Bennett, John Tupil For the Nuremberg picture Judgment, she was a voice coach to Judy Garland, who was speaking in a German accent. Garland's career earned her an Academy Award nomination.

Respect for Acting (1973) and A Challenge for the Actor (1991), both of which promote realistic acting (as opposed to pre-determined "formalistic" acting). "In her mode of realism, the actor uses his own psyche to gain identification with the role," expecting that a form would emerge. Hagen credited director Harold Clurman with a turn-around in her acting career: respect for Acting, Hagen praised actor Harold Clurman for his turn-around in her role:

Hagen later "disassociated" herself from her first book, Respect for Acting. She renamed a term she had originally intended for identifying elements of an actor's life with his/her character development, instead of "transference." Though Hagen said that the actor should identify the role he plays with feelings and experiences from his own life, she also mentions that:

For several college acting classes, Respect for Acting is used as a textbook. Love for Cooking, a 1976 cookbook by the author, was also published. At a White House reception in 2002, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President George W. Bush.

Karen Ludwig and Pennie du Pont, the first woman to film master classes in NYC, LA, Toronto, and Chicago, agreed to be filmed in 2001 by Hagen's Acting Class, a two-part set that captures her master classes. The video has been extensively researched and is now taught in a variety of acting classes.

During his Archive of American Television interview in 2004, Harvey Korman discusses studying under her guidance. In Six Weeks at the Geffen Playhouse in 2001, David Hyde Pierce appeared in Richard Alfieri's Six Dance Lessons. Hyde Pierce spoke at her 2004 memorial at the Majestic Theater in Manhattan.

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Awards and nominations

• 1951 Tony Award, Actress—Play, The Country Girl"
• 1963 Tony Award, Actress—Play, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
• Special 1999 Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement
• 1999 Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• 2002 National Medal of Arts