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Biagio Anthony “Ben” Gazzara (born August 28, 1930) is an American actor in television and motion pictures. Gazzara was born in New York City, the son of Italian immigrants Angelina (née Cusumano) and Antonio Gazzara, who was a laborer and carpenter. Gazzara grew up on New York`s tough Lower East Side. He actually lived on E. 29th Street and participated in the drama program at Madison Square Boys and Girls Club located across the street. He Later, attended New York City`s famed Stuyvesant High School. He found relief from his bleak surroundings by joining a theater company at a very young age. Years later, he said 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.
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. For his work in the series, Gazzara received two Emmy nominations for "Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series" and three Golden Globe nominations for "Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series - Drama".
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 1974, he co-starred with Anthony Hopkins in the acclaimed TV mini-series QB VII. 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), for which he received his third Emmy nomination. Very much in demand for
Biography Credit: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Gazzara
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I turned down so many movies because I was idealistic. I was so pure. I didn`t really take advantage of the opportunities. If I had the same chances today I would take them all because you never know where it will lead.
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