Uta Hagen

Uta Thyra Hagen 12 June 1919 14 January 2004 was a GermanAmerican actress and theatre practitioner She originated the role of Martha in the 1962 Broadway premiere of Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf by Edward Albee who called her a profoundly truthful actress Because Hagen was on the Hollywood blacklist in part because of her association with Paul Robeson her film opportunities dwindled and she focused her career on New York theatre She later became a highly influential acting teacher at New Yorks Herbert Berghof Studio and authored bestselling acting texts Respect for Acting with Haskel Frankel and A Challenge for the Actor Her most substantial contributions to theatre pedagogy were a series of object exercises that built on the work of Konstantin Stanislavski and Yevgeny Vakhtangov She was elected to the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1981 She twice won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play and received a Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1999 Description above from the Wikipedia article Uta Hagen licensed under CCBYSA full list of contributors on Wikipedia