Austin Pendleton is an actor, director, playwright, and, at HB Studio in New York, a teacher of acting and sometimes directing. His acting career in New York began with two productions directed by Jerome Robbins: Oh, Dad, Poor Dad, Momma’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feeling So Sad, by Arthur Kopit: and Fiddler on the Roof, in which he originated the role of Motel, the Tailor. Since then he has acted in New York in a handful of Broadway shows, most recently Choir Boy by Tarell Alvin McCraney (Moonlight); more off-Broadway shows (including the Obie-winning musical, The Last Sweet Days of Isaac); and many more off-off-Broadway shows, in which he has played such title roles as Hamlet, King Lear, Richard the Second, and Richard the Third. He has been in well over 200 movies, and appeared as a regular in such TV shows as Oz and Homicide. His plays (produced and published) are Orson’s Shadow, Uncle Bob, and Booth. As a director in New York, he was nominated for a Tony for this production of The Little Foxes, starring Elizabeth Taylor, and won an Obie for Three Sisters, at Classic Stage Company, with Peter Sarsgaard, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jessica Hecht, and Juliet Rylance. He apprenticed and began his Equity acting and his professional directing career at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, under the guidance of Nikos Psacharopoulos. He is a member of the Ensemble at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre.
