• Biography
• Movies

• More ...
• Filmbug Top 100
• Movie Dictionary

Browse ..
A-Z
By Date
By Year
By State
By Country

•  

Ben Gazzara was born in Manhattan, the son of Sicilian immigrants. He attended the City College of New York, the New School for Social Research, and became a member of The Actors Studio in its early years.

Gazzara received critical acclaim for his stage debut as Jock de Paris in End as a Man, and had his film debut in 1957 in the filmed version, The Strange One. His next film role was in Otto Preminger's Anatomy of a Murder with James Stewart and Lee Remick in 1959. Gazzara is perhaps best know for his work with maverick film director John Cassavetes in Husbands, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, and Opening Night. For director Peter Bogdanovich, Gazzara appeared in Saint Jack and They All Laughed. Among Gazzara's many other films are Voyage of the Damned, Tales of Ordinary Madness, and Roadhouse. His most recent feature films include Joel and Ethan Coen's The Big Lebowski, as well as The Spanish Prisoner, The Shadow Conspiracy, Vicious Circles, and Illuminata. He will soon be seen starring in the upcoming Undertakers Paradise and The Thomas Crown Affair.

Gazzara first appeared on television in the highly regarded live programs Philco Playhouse and Playhouse 90. Among his other television credits are the popular 1950s series Run for Your Life and the acclaimed television movie An Early Frost, for which he received an Emmy Award nomination.

Throughout his career, Gazzara has continued to appear in theatre. For director Elia Kazan, he starred in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and his other stage appearances include A Hatful of Rain, Strange Interlude, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Love Letters, and Chinese Coffee.

In 1990, he directed his first motion picture, Beyond the Ocean, filmed entirely on the island of Bali. Gazzara currently lives in Italy, where he has acted in films directed by Marco Ferreri, Pasquale Festa Campanile and Giuseppe Tornatore, among others.