Sandra Seacat, Actress and Beloved Acting Coach, Dies at 86
Her students included Laura Dern, Andrew Garfield, Mickey Rourke, Jessica Lange, Marlo Thomas and Shia LaBeouf.
She was not on the list.
Sandra Seacat, the actress and influential acting coach who as a Lee Strasberg disciple taught the craft to the likes of Laura Dern, Mickey Rourke, Harvey Keitel, Common, Andrew Garfield, Michelle Williams and many others, has died. She was 86.
Seacat died Tuesday of natural causes in Santa Monica, family friend and publicist Stan Rosenfield announced.
Seacat’s students said her innovative techniques were able to extract out of them their most truthful, powerful and naturalistic performances.
“Sandra lived by seeing magic and possibility in everything,” Dern said in a statement. “She met the discovery of character and story with equal protectiveness, irreverence, humility and grace. She taught us the practice of investigating healing through acting.
“But more than that, she invited us to know ourselves as artists and humans in ways I could’ve never begun to explore without her. She’s been my teacher since age 17, and I had the honor of acting alongside her several times. She is my whole heart.”
Seacat and Dern sat together and visited the beach in 2015 for The Hollywood Reporter‘s Oscar Issue.
“The artist is a shaman, a wounded healer; we have wounds that we want to bring forth through the material,” Seacat said then. “It’s joyful, it’s painful, but not painful in a bad way. When you do that, you also heal people in the audience.”
Common got that message, saying in a statement that the teacher “impacted and inspired my life in ways that only God could have orchestrated. Her love for people, her love for life, her love acting let me know. As she would always tell me, ‘You can heal people through your work as an actor, you can inspire people through your work as an actor.’ And that truly made me see the higher purpose in the art that I do.”
Rourke told the Los Angeles Times in 1984 that Seacat turned his life around by “channeling all it was that was messing me up into something creative and challenging.”
Her students also included Jessica Lange, Marlo Thomas, Peter Falk, Aaron Eckhart, Meg Ryan, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Shia LaBeouf, Isabella Rossellini, Treat Williams, Melanie Griffith, Christopher Reeve, Don Johnson, Mary Kay Place and Martin Henderson.
The oldest of three daughters, Sandra Diane Seacat was born on Oct. 2, 1936, in Greensburg, Kansas. After graduating from Northwestern, she headed to New York to pursue acting with $69 to her name. Strasberg accepted her as a member of The Actors Studio and later encouraged her to teach.
She made her Broadway debut in 1964 with a small part in a Strasberg-directed Actors Studio production of The Three Sisters, starring Geraldine Page, Kim Stanley and Shirley Knight, and drew attention with work on other stages in The Noble Spaniard, The Waltz of the Dogs and Saint Joan.
Also in the ’60s, she partnered with former teacher Michael Howard, Gene Hackman and others to launch the New York-based improvisational troupe Second City Revue. She made it back to Broadway in the 1970s in A Streetcar Named Desire and Sly Fox.
Since 1975, Seacat conducted her own classes and workshops in the U.S. and Europe.
Seacat herself showed up on the big screen in films including The Rose (1979), Frances (1982), Crazy in Alabama (1999), You Don’t Know Jack (2010) and Palo Alto (2013), and she directed the comedy In the Spirit (1990), starring Thomas and Elaine May.
Survivors include her husband, Thurn Hoffman, and her daughter, acting teacher Greta Seacat. A memorial will take place in New York and Los Angeles later in the year. Contributions to celebrate Sandra’s life should be made in her name to The Actors Studio.
One of her final acting performances came as Garfield’s mother in last year’s FX/Hulu drama Under the Banner of Heaven.
Said Garfield: “It is impossible to express who Sandra Seacat is and was and will forever be. She is a true legend in the sense that she lived the most virtuous life one can imagine. A life devoted to profound service and healing through art. She was a revolutionary, a culture-changing teacher of acting and storytelling. She is a beacon for all of us of what a life of deep meaning and beauty can look like. And she was irreverent and forever playing like a joyful, unbridled child.
“I feel grateful beyond words to be able to call her my teacher, my acting partner in Under the Banner of Heaven, my mentor and my friend.”
Filmography
Film
Year Title Role
1975 Night Moves Voice
1979 The Rose Reporter
1980 The Kidnapping
of the President Henrietta Cown
1980 Jane Austen in
Manhattan Thriftshop Lady
1982 Frances Drama Teacher
1983 The Golden Seal Gladys
1984 Country Louise Brewer
1987 Promised
Land Mrs Rivers
1988 Wildfire Sissy
1990 In the Spirit Director
1993 Born Yesterday Thanks
1994 The New Age Mary Netter
1996 The Destiny of
Marty Fine Woman on Beach
1998 The Baby Dance Doreen
1999 Crazy in
Alabama Meemaw
2001 The Want Doctor
2001 Nailed Sandra the Midwife
2001 Daddy and Them Elbe
2003 Prey for Rock &
Roll Mother
2003 In the Cut Creative consultant
2003 A Little Crazy Delphine
2004 In the Land of
Milk and Money Mrs. Trevors
2004 Illusion The Boarding House Lady
2007 Fade Woman
2007 Tattered
Angel Louise
2010 Sympathy
for Delicious Mrs. Matilda
2010 You Don't Know
Jack Janet Adkins
2012 Shale (short
subject) Sheila
2012 The Time Being Annette
2013 Palo Alto Tanya
2014 Alex of Venice Sandra
2015 The Scarecrow
(short subject) Janine
2016 Buster's Mal
Heart Public Access Psychic
2017 The Strangeness You Feel (short subject) Jane
Television
Year Title Role
1966 Directions
'66 (TV series; one episode – 1966, 5 June) Not
available (as Sandra Kaufman)
1976 First Ladies
Diaries: Edith Wilson (TV movie) Helen
1978 "Fame"
(Hallmark) (TV movie) Bess
1986 Nobody's
Child (TV movie) Barbara
1991 Held Hostage:
The Sis and Jerry Levin Story (TV movie) NA
1994 Reunion
(TV movie) NA
1999 Mickey Rourke:
The E! True Hollywood Story (TV documentary) Herself
2000 Intimate
Portrait: Laura Dern (TV series documentary) Herself
2001 Biography:
Jessica Lange, On Her Own Terms (TV series documentary) Herself
2008 The Dark Side
of Fame with Piers Morgan: Mickey Rourke (TV series documentary) Herself
2011 Enlightened
(TV series; two episodes – 2011, 10 and 17 October) Patricia
2013 Enlightened
(One episode – 2013, 27 January) Patricia
2022 Under the
Banner of Heaven (Starring role) Josie
Pyre
Students of Sandra Seacat
Tiana Alexandra
Roseanna Arquette
Kirk Baltz
Mikhail Baryshnikov
Lawrence Bender
Lili Bordán
Raoul Bova
Josh Brolin
Betty Buckley
Stefano Zanchetti
Nicolas Cage
Hélène Cardona
Reeve Carney
Lynda Carter
Justin Chatwin
Desmond Child
Scott Coffey
Common
Blythe Danner
Robert Davi
Loren Dean
Rebecca DeMornay
Johnny Depp
Laura Dern
Peter Dobson
Peter Falk
Frances Fisher
Joely Fisher
Tricia Leigh Fisher
Andrew Garfield
Martha Gehman
Gina Gershon
Melanie Griffith
Cornelia Guest
Martin Henderson
Lance Henriksen
Tina Holmes
Don Johnson
Harvey Keitel
Arfi Lamba
Jessica Lange
Peggy Lipton
Melanie Mayron
Tatum O'Neal
Michelle Pfeiffer
Janina Picard
Chris Pine
Steve Railsback
Christopher Reeve
Isabella Rossellini
Mickey Rourke
Meg Ryan
Diane Salinger
Ally Sheedy
Brooke Shields
Helen Slater
Alex Cole Taylor
Marlo Thomas
Dov Tiefenbach
Rosie Vela
Rachel Ward
Treat Williams
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