British Theatre Guide logo
 
News

 

Links

Articles

News

Reviews

Amateur Theatre

Contact

Other Resources

Bookstore

Forum

Search the Site

 

Dateline: 15th January, 2004

Uta Hagen

American actress Uta Hagen has died at the age of 84.

In a professional acting career which began at the age of 18 in 1937 as Ophelia, she became one of the great names of American theatre, not only as an actress but also as a teacher. A year later she played Nine in The Seagull on Broadway - an incredible start for a young actress. She is best known for creating the part of Martha in Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf on Broadway, which earned her her second Tony. She won her first in 1951 for Odets' The Country Girl.

She wrote two books, Respect for Acting (1973) and A Challenge for the Actor (1991), and taught alongside her second husband, Herbert Berghof, in the Herbert Berghof Studio, from 1947. Among her many alumni are Geraldine Page, Jason Robards, and Matthew Broderick.

She suffered a stroke in 2001 and had not been well since then. She died in her Manhatten home on Wednesday.

Peter Lathan writes:

I saw Uta Hagen in Donald Margulies' Collected Stories at the Lucille Lortell Theatre in Greenwich Village, New York, in 1998, when she was 78, and what a performance that was. I wrote in that review: I have been fortunate enough to see - live - Olivier and Gielgud, Redgrave and Richardson, and many others, and I have to say that the quality of performance in this play was the equal of anything I've seen on the British stage. Frankly, it was worth the trip to NYC just for this play alone!

I hadn't come across Ms Hagen before, although I must have seen her in The Boys from Brazil, one of the few films she appeared in. In that, I am afraid, I am probably typical of most people in Britain. Unlike "most people in Britain", I was fortunate enough to see her onstage and I mourn the passing of a great actress.

|A|B|C|D|E|F|G|H|I|J|K|L|M|N|O|P|Q|R|S|T|U|V|W|X|Y|Z|

News Archive A-L
News Archive M-Z
Production News Archive

Please note that all three Archive indices are very long and will therefore take some time to download.

 

 

©Peter Lathan 2004