Background

Ethnicity: Uta was of Welsh-German ancestry on her father's side and Danish on her mother's side.

Uta Hagen was born on June 12, 1919, in Göttingen, Germany to an artistic family. Her mother, Thyra A. (Leisner) Hagen was a Danish opera singer and teacher, and her father, Oskar Hagen, started the Handel Opera Festival in Göttingen. Six years after Hagen's birth, the family emigrated to the United States, moving to Madison, Wisconsin. When she was six, her father accepted a position at the University of Wisconsin and moved the family to Madison. It was here, in the Midwest, where Hagen was raised until the age of sixteen. While growing up, Hagen attended the theater regularly with her parents, both in the United States and on frequent trips to Europe.

Education

Uta Hagen made up her mind to become an actress at the age of nine after seeing Elisabeth Bergner in Saint Joan. She performed in school plays and read the works of celebrated playwrights Shakespeare, Goethe, and Moliere.

After her graduation from Wisconsin High School (present-day University of Wisconsin High School), Uta enrolled at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1936 but left after one term because she found the classes too academic. Following a semester at the University of Wisconsin (present-day University of Wisconsin-Madison) in 1937, where she made her first stage appearance as Sorrel in Noël Coward's Hay Fever, Hagen left college early - and left home - to become an actress.

Uta received honorary doctorates from Smith College, DePaul University, and Wooster College.

Career

Uta Hagen wrote to Eva Le Gallienne, asking to join her prestigious Civic Repertory Theatre company. She not only won an audition but, in 1937, played Ophelia in Le Gallienne's production of Hamlet at the Cape Playhouse in Dennis, Massachusetts. Bypassing the usual progression of bit parts, Hagen made her Broadway debut at age 19, in the role of Nina in the Theatre Guild's production of The Seagull. According to at least one New York critic, the fledgling actress stole a few scenes from her formidable co-stars Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne.

Hagen co-starred in several successful plays, including the comedy Vickie (1942) and Shakespeare's Othello (1943), with Paul Robeson as Othello, Ferrer as Iago, and Hagen as Desdemona. The production, directed by Margaret Webster, had a run of 295 performances, a record at the time for a Shakespearean play. After its Broadway run, the production enjoyed a successful tour.

In 1947 Hagen was cast inThe Whole World Over, directed by Harold Clurman, whom she credits with introducing her to a new way of acting, a method that challenged the "tricks" that had come to shape her performances. Hagen's co-star was actor Herbert Berghof, who had fled Vienna during World War II. The two fell in love during the run of the play although they did not marry until 1951. Berghof helped Hagen to understand and apply the new acting technique she was testing and also recruited her to teach in his acting school, the HB Studio, which she has been associated with ever since.

The late 1940s also brought Hagen one of her juiciest roles, that of Blanche DuBois in Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire (1947). After receiving glowing reviews while touring the play with the National Company, she was called upon to replace Jessica Tandy in the original Broadway cast. On the heels of Streetcar came the role of Georgie, the dowdy wife of an alcoholic in Clifford Odets' stinging drama The Country Girl (1950), for which she won her first Tony Award as well as the Donaldson Award and the New York Drama Critics Award. With her career in high gear, Hagen starred in a Theatre Guild production of Saint Joan (1951), directed again by Margaret Webster. Critics were particularly taken with her intensely controlled performance.

During the 1950s, because of her liberal views and her earlier relationship with Paul Robeson, Hagen was blacklisted, making it impossible for her to work in movies or television. Some 20 years later, Hagen finally did venture into films, appearing in the thriller The Other (1972), followed by The Boys from Brazil (1978) and Reversal of Fortune (1990).

Hagen won a second Tony for her memorable portrayal of Martha, the embittered, vulnerable wife of a college professor in Edward Albee's first full-length play, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962). Although critics expressed reservations about the play, particularly Albee's exploitation of obscenity, they were overwhelming in their praise of Hagen. She made her London debut as Martha in February 1964, receiving the London Critics Award for Best Female Performance.

Hagen's personal integrity and her preference for roles of quality have led her to seek fulfillment in venues other than Broadway. Teaching has been an important component of her career since 1947. After the death of her husband in 1990, Hagen concentrated on reorganizing HB Studio and The HB Playwrights Foundation and continued to appear in many of the Foundation's productions.

Notable actors that studied under Uta Hagen include Katie Finneran, Liza Minnelli, Whoopi Goldberg, Jack Lemmon, Debbie Allen, F. Murray Abraham, Rita Gardner, Steve McQueen, Amanda Peet, Marlo Thomas, Jerry Stiller, Charles Nelson Reilly, and Hal Holbrook, among many others.

Hagen set forth her theories in two books, Respect for Acting (1973) and A Challenge for the Actor (1991), both of which have become standard references for students and professionals. She also wrote Love for Cooking in 1976, and an autobiography, Sources, in 1983.

In 1995, at age 76, the now-legendary Hagen appeared off-Broadway, in Nicholas Wright's Mrs. Klein, a biographical drama about the Austrian-born pioneering child psychologist Melanie Klein, which also starred Laila Robins in the role of Klein's daughter. The play traces Klein's slow realization that the death of her son in a mysterious climbing accident, may indeed have been a suicide.

Achievements

• 

  Uta Hagen was a legendary actress, teacher, and author. She had a long, distinguished career on the stage, for decades she was one of the most important acting teachers in America, she also wrote with wit and clarity about the technical craft of acting. She left a remarkable and lasting legacy in the field of theatre and the dramatic arts.
  
  Hagen's accomplishments are so extensive as to be nearly innumerable. She won her first Tony Award in 1951 as Georgie Elgin in Clifford Odets' The Country Girl, and her second in the original role of Martha in the 1962 Broadway premiere of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, for which she also won the London Critics Award. Over the course of her acting career, she received nominations for a Daytime Emmy Award and for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and won the Obie Award for her title role in Nicholas Wright's 1996-1997 production of Mrs. Klein.
  
  In 1981-1983, Hagen was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame and the Wisconsin Theater Hall of Fame. Three years later, Hagen was awarded the Mayor's Liberty Medal in New York City along with The John Houseman Award and The Campostella Award for distinguished service in 1987. She won her third Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1999, and in March 2003, Hagen was awarded the National Medal of Honor for the Arts, for which she was honored at the White House.

Works

More photos

• book

  • A Challenge For The Actor

    (Theoretically, the actor ought to be more sound in mind a...)

    1991
  • Sources: A Memoir

    (Uta Hagen, one of the great ladies of the American theatr...)

    1983
  • Respect for Acting

    (Respect for Acting by actress and teacher Uta Hagen (Wile...)

    1973
  • Love For Cooking 1976

• movie

  • The Other

    (After their father dies, young twin brothers Holland (Mar...)

    1972
  • Reversal of Fortune

    (When socialite Sunny von Bülow (Glenn Close) inexplicably...)

    1990
  • The Boys From Brazil

    (Dr. Josef Mengele (Gregory Peck) clones Hitler 95 times a...)

    1978

Politics

After World War II and fears of the Soviet Union and communism were running high. Because Hagen and Ferrer were so closely associated with Robeson, an African-American actor well-known for his leftist views, they were eventually called to Washington, D.C., to be questioned about their own beliefs. Ferrer denied any connection to leftist views, and Hagen was never asked to give her views at all. Despite that, Hagen ended up being blacklisted from television and Hollywood movie roles.

Views

Hagan believed acting had a social responsibility, and that the artist should be cultivated and widely educated. If one was dedicated to making the world a better place through art, she believed, the art must be practiced frequently and publicly. Yet there was the practicality in her approach; she believed that audiences were collaborators, and closely followed performers, such as Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland, to develop the illusion of speaking viewers as individuals.

There was a balance in her approach, which was method acting but not taken to the self-immolating extremes of some of its practitioners. Though she demanded respect, she eschewed pretension. "I teach acting as I approach it - from the human and technical problems I have experienced through living and practice," she said.

Quotations: "We must overcome the notion that we must be regular... it robs you of the chance to be extraordinary and leads you to the mediocre."

"Keep pace with the present. Take a trip to the moon. envision the future."

"The need to be loved and protected is at a peak when we feel abandoned and are particularly vulnerable to difficult circumstances."

"It must be noted that it is often the colleague or direct disciple of a new thinker who gets stuck in literal interpretations of the work, tending to freeze the new ideas and language into an inflexible, static condition."

Personality

Uta Hagen was a transcendent actor, life-changing teacher, and blazingly honest advocate for the relevance and power of theater. Her integrity was legendary; she defiantly told truth to power and took personal and professional risks for the sake of great art.

Quotes from others about the person

• "This extraordinary woman is one of the greatest actresses I have seen in my lifetime, yet she has deliberately made her acting career secondary to teaching and directing others so that they might benefit. Lord knows what exalted position she might have attained had she chosen to concentrate on her own acting career, but I guarantee that she has absolutely no regrets. Nor should she, because she has given so much to so many." - Jack Lemmon

Interests

• Writers

  William Shakespeare, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Molière

Connections

In December 1938, Hagen married actor José Ferrer, whom she met in summer stock. (According to one story, she knocked him unconscious one night during a fight scene.) Their daughter Letty was born when Hagen was just 20. Hagen's marriage to Ferrer lasted ten years. On 25 January 1957 Hagen married Herbert Berghof. The marriage lasted until his death in 1990.

Father:

Oskar Hagen

Oskar Hagen was a German art historian. While lecturing at the University of Göttingen from 1918 to 1925, Hagen helped establish the Göttingen International Handel Festival.

Mother:

Thyra A. (Leisner) Hagen

Thyra A. (Leisner) Hagen was a German opera singer.

Brother:

Holger Hagen

Ex-husband:

José Ferrer

José Ferrer was a Puerto Rican actor, producer, and film director. He starred in such films as The Secret Fury, Cyrano de Bergerac, Moulin Rouge, and Who Has Seen the Wind. Ferrer also directed such films as The Shrike, The Fourposter, and Stalag 17.

Daughter:

Leticia Thyra Ferrer

Letty Ferrer was born into a noble theatrical family. She made her acting debut as a young child in Othello starring Uta Hagen, Jose Ferrer, and Paul Robeson. Her early credits also include appearing in Jose Ferrer's historic version of Cyrano de Bergerac.

husband:

Herbert Berghof

Herbert Berghof was an Austrian-American actor, director. He was one of the nation's most respected acting teachers and coaches.

colleague:

Eva Le Gallienne

Eva Le Gallienne was a British-born American actress, director, and producer, one of the outstanding figures of the 20th-century American stage.

colleague:

Paul Robeson

Paul Leroy Robeson was an American bass-baritone concert artist and stage and film actor who became famous both for his cultural accomplishments and for his political activism.

colleague:

Margaret Webster

Margaret Webster was an American actress and director who devoted her career to bringing theater, particularly Shakespeare, to the greater public.

protege:

Whoopi Goldberg

protege:

Steve McQueen

protege:

Amanda Peet