John Cassavetes

Father of Nick Cassavetes , Xan Cassavetes and Zoe R. Cassavetes. Son of Nicholas John Cassavetes and Katherine Cassavetes.

Friend/actor Peter Falk said: "Cassavetes was the most fervent man I ever met, and he didnt have a copy-cat bone in his body."

A photograph of Cassavetes, taken during the production of his film Husbands , appears on one stamp of a sheet of 10 USA 37 commemorative postage stamps, issued 25 February 2003, celebrating American Filmmaking: Behind the Scenes. The stamp honors directing.

Educated at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City.

Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume Two, 1945-1985". Pages 189-194. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1988.

Friend/actor Peter Falk said: Every Cassavetes film is always about the same thing. Somebody said Man is God in ruins, and John saw the ruins with a clarity that you and I could not tolerate..

In Ray Carney s "Cassavetes on Cassavetes" book, Cassavetes confessed to his parents that he wanted to be an actor. His father wasnt initially thrilled at the idea of his son being an actor, but told him that he had to work hard because he would be portraying human emotions truthfully.

He was fully Greek in heritage.

Auditioned for The Actors Studio when he was starting out as an actor, but was rejected.

Despite many claiming that his films are improvised, its actually a completed script that comes from improvised work by the actors. Another trademark of his films is that theyre shot documentary-style.

He and Gena Rowlands made ten movies together: A Child Is Waiting , Faces (1968/I) , Gli intoccabili , Minnie and Moskowitz , A Woman Under the Influence , Two-Minute Warning , Opening Night , Gloria , Tempest and Love Streams .

Directed 3 different actors in Oscar-nominated performances: Seymour Cassel , Lynn Carlin and Gena Rowlands.

He and his good friend Ben Gazzara made 5 movies together: Husbands , Capone , If Its Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium , Opening Night and The Killing of a Chinese Bookie

He and close friend Peter Falk made six movies together: Gli intoccabili , Husbands , A Woman Under the Influence , Mikey and Nicky , Opening Night , Big Trouble , and one movie made for TV: "Columbo" {tude in Black (#2.1)} .

As of 2007, he is one of only eight filmmakers to be nominated for best directing, writing, and acting Oscars over the course of their lifetime. The other seven are Orson Welles , Woody Allen , Warren Beatty , George Clooney , Roberto Benigni , John Huston and Kenneth Branagh.

Son-in-law of Lady Rowlands.

Brother-in-law of David Rowlands.

As of 2013, he is one of six men who has directed his wife to a Best Actress Oscar nomination, and is the only one to have directed her to two such nominations (Gena Rowlands in A Woman Under the Influence and Gloria ). The other five are Paul Czinner directing Elisabeth Bergner in Escape Me Never (1935) , Paul Newman directing Joanne Woodward in Rachel, Rachel , Richard Brooks directing Jean Simmons in The Happy Ending , Blake Edwards directing Julie Andrews in Victor Victoria , and Joel Coen directing Frances McDormand in Fargo . Jules Dassin also directed his future wife Melina Mercouri in a Best Actress Oscar-nominated performance ( Pote tin Kyriaki ), though they were not yet married at the time of the nomination.

One of the screening rooms at the Thessaloniki Film Festival is named after him.

Adhered to the Stanislavsky School of Method Acting and taught acting classes in 1956 (in his own workshop that he started) prior to making the film Shadows .

Acted in films by other directors in order to finance his own projects.

While some of his Hollywood films (such as Too Late Blues ) lost money, his own movies were often hugely successful. Shadows , filmed with non-professional actors on the streets of New York with a hand-held camera on 16mm black & white film, cost a mere $40,000 and recouped its cost many times over, winning the 1960 Critics Award at the Venice Film Festival. Another of his films, Faces (1968/I) , cost $1 million and made ten times as much in profits, as well as taking out another five prizes in Venice in 1970.

Actor and film director who was regarded as a pioneer of American cinema verit.

The New Yorker magazine said in 2013 that Cassavetes "may be the most influential American director of the last half century" --this on the eve of the screening of all of the films he directed, at the BAM Theater in Brooklyn, NY throughout July 2013.

He was considered for the role of Tom Hagen in The Godfather before Robert Duvall was cast.

(July 2013) Retrospective: Screening of all the films Cassavetes directed, plus some he acted in, at Brooklyn Academy of Music, July 6-31.

He played the brother of his real life wife Gena Rowlands in Love Streams .

Retrospective at the 1st American Film Festival in Wroclaw, Poland.

He directed Val Avery in five films: Too Late Blues , Faces (1968/I) , Minnie and Moskowitz , The Killing of a Chinese Bookie and Gloria .

He directed Fred Draper in five films: A Child Is Waiting , Faces (1968/I) , Husbands , A Woman Under the Influence and Opening Night .

Wrote a scathing "Letter to the Editor", published in the January 23, 1970 issue of Life Magazine, and which strongly criticized the magazine for publishing a now notorious photo of Charles Manson on the cover of its December 19, 1969, issue. Cassavetes had costarred in the horror movie, Rosemarys Baby," , directed by Roman Polanski, whose pregnant wife Sharon Tate, had been among the unfortunate victims of the grisly cult killings.

His son Nick is nearly a foot taller than him.

As an artist, I feel that we must try many things - but above all we,must dare to fail.

Say what you are. Not what you would like to be. Not what you have to,be. Just say what you are. And what you are is good enough.

Everyone has made a love, religion, god. Time magazine had the audacity,to kill God and those people are floundering and walking around the,world with nothing in their lives, simply because they are not led by,anybody with responsibility.

Film is, to me, just unimportant. But people are very important.

I’ve never seen an exploding helicopter. I’ve never seen anybody go and blow somebody’s head off. So why should I make films about them? But I have seen people destroy themselves in the smallest way, I’ve seen people withdraw, I’ve seen people hide behind political ideas, behind dope, behind the sexual revolution, behind fascism, behind hypocrisy, and I’ve myself done all these things. So I can understand them. What we are saying is so gentle. It’s gentleness. We have problems, terrible problems, but our problems are human problems.

I’m very worried about the depiction of women on the screen. It’s gotten worse than ever and it’s related to their being either high- or low-class concubines, and the only question is when or where they will go to bed, with whom, and how many. There’s nothing to do with the dreams of women, or of woman as the dream, nothing to do with the quirky part of her, the wonder of her.

You can defeat fear through humor, through pain, through honesty, bravery, intuition, and through love in the truest sense. .