Uta Hagen

A celebrated Broadway actress who is also noted as perhaps one of the most respected acting teachers in the USA, Uta Hagen has been an outspoken critic of both the Stanislavsky Method as practiced (but not of the Russian master himself) and of formalism in acting. Born in Germany, but raised from childhood in Madison, WI, Hagen made her professional acting debut in 1937 playing Ophelia opposite Eva Le Gallienne in the latter's ground-breaking New York production of "Hamlet." That same year, she made her Broadway debut as Nina in a Broadway production of Chekhov's "The Seagull" starring Alfred Lunt and Lynne Fontanne, both of whom would have a profound influence on her acting style. She went on to star opposite her then-husband Jose Ferrer and Paul Muni in "Key Largo" (1939-40) and was the subject of controversy playing Desdemona to Paul Robeson's "Othello" (with Ferrer as Iago). When the show toured, some less liberal audience members were not accepting of a black actor and white actress having physical contact on stage. Hagen was actually contemplating abandoning the craft until she was cast by Harold Clurman in "The Whole World Over" in 1947. Clurman, one of the founders of The Group Theatre, introduced Hagen to Stanislavsky and what she would term "truthfulness on stage" as well as to Herbert Berghof, who asked her first to join his HB Studios as an acting teacher and then, several years later, to be his wife.