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John Nicholas Cassavetes (December 9, 1929 – February 3, 1989) was an American actor, screenwriter, and director. He appeared in many Hollywood films, and is considered a pioneer of American independent film.

Cassavetes was born in New York City, the son of Katherine Demetri (who was to feature in some of his films) and Nicholas John Cassavetes, Greek immigrants to the U.S. His early years were spent with his family in Greece; when he returned, at the age of seven, he spoke no English.[1] He grew up in Long Island, New York and attended high school at Blair Academy in New Jersey before moving to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. On graduation in 1950, he continued acting in the theater, took small parts in films, and began working on television in anthology series such as Alcoa Theatre.

During this time he met and married actress Gena Rowlands. By 1956, Cassavetes had begun teaching method acting in workshops in New York City. An improvisation exercise in one workshop inspired the idea for his writing and directorial debut, Shadows (1959). Cassavetes raised the funds for production from friends and family, as well as listeners to Jean Shepherd`s late-night radio talk show "Night People".

Cassavetes was unable to get American distributors to carry Shadows, so he took it to Europe, where it won the Critics Award at the Venice Film Festival. European distributors later released the movie in the United States as an import. Although the viewership of Shadows in the United States was slight, it did gain attention from the Hollywood studios. Cassavetes directed two movies for Hollywood in the early 1960s — Too Late Blues and A Child Is Waiting.

He also played Johnny Staccato in a late 50s television series about a jazz pianist who also worked as a detective. It was broadcast on NBC between September 1959 and March 1960, when it was acquired by ABC. Although critically acclaimed, the series was cancelled in September 1960. He performed as an actor in films such as The Dirty Dozen (1967), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor as an impudent, insubordinate condemned soldier, and in Roman Polanski`s Rosemary`s Baby (1968) as a two-faced actor. Other notable appearances include the role of the victim in Don Siegel`s The Killers, and as a vicious government nemesis to Kirk Douglas in The Fury (1978).

His next film as a director (and his second independent film) was Faces, starring his wife Rowlands as well as John Marley, Seymour Cassel and Val Avery. It depicts a contemporary marriage in slow disintegration. Faces was nominated for three Academy Awards (Best Original Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress). Around this time, Cassavetes formed "Faces International" as a distribution company to handle all of his films.

Husbands (1970) stars Cassavetes himself with Peter Falk and Ben Gazzara. They play a trio of married men on a spree in New York and London after the funeral of one of their best friends. Minnie and Moskowitz, about two unlikely lovers, has Rowlands with Seymour Cassel. He played opposite Peter Falk again in 1972, in the film Columbo: Etude in Black, playing the pianist and murderer Alex Benedict.

His three films of the 1970s were produced independently. A Woman Under the Influence (1974) stars Rowlands as an increasingly troubled housewife named Mabel. Mabel is probably the most extreme example of the complexity of Cassavet

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