Uta Hagen

Uta Hagen (June 12, 1919 – January 14, 2004) was a German-American actress, theatre professor, and author. She was highly influential in the development of acting techniques in the 20th century, particularly through her book Respect for Acting.

Hagen was born in Göttingen, Germany, to intellectuals. Her father was an art historian and her mother an opera singer. The family emigrated to the United States in 1924, settling in Madison, Wisconsin, where her father became head of the Art History Department at the University of Wisconsin.

She began her acting career at the age of 18 and made her Broadway debut in 1938 as Ophelia in Hamlet, starring opposite Eva Le Gallienne. She won Tony Awards for her performances in The Country Girl (1951) and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1963). Other notable stage roles included Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, Saint Joan, and Martha in Virginia Woolf (which she originated on Broadway).

Hagen's acting philosophy emphasized emotional realism and psychological truth. Her teaching methods, detailed in Respect for Acting (1973) and A Challenge for the Actor (1991), stressed the importance of rigorous personal exploration and the substitution of personal experiences to create believable performances. She encouraged actors to analyze their characters' motivations and to find connections between their own lives and the roles they played.

From 1947 until her death, Hagen taught acting at HB Studio in New York City, influencing generations of actors, including Robert De Niro, Liza Minnelli, Whoopi Goldberg, Amanda Plummer, and Matthew Broderick. She was a vocal advocate for actors' rights and artistic integrity.

Hagen was married twice: first to actor José Ferrer (1938-1948) and later to actor Herbert Berghof, with whom she ran HB Studio, until his death in 1990.