Tuesday, January 17, 2023

Sandra Seacat obit

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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