The son of Sicilian immigrants, Ben Gazzara grew up on New York City's tough Lower East Side in a cold-water flat with the bathtub in the kitchen, speaking Italian as his first language. While movies of the era fueled his dreams, it was the applause greeting his first performance in a play at the Boys Club when he was 12 that really sold him on the life of an actor. After studying engineering briefly, he dropped out of the City College of New York to attend (on scholarship) Erwin Piscator's Dramatic Workshop of the New School for Social Research. Later as a member of the Actors Studio, he took Broadway by storm with his electric portrayal in the group's "End as a Man" (1953), playing a sadistic cadet who exerts a peculiar control over various underclassmen. Starring roles in the original Broadway productions of Tennessee Williams' "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" and Michael V. Gazzo's "A Hatful of Rain" (both 1955) followed, the latter bringing him his first Tony nomination. Peter Bogdanovich who would later direct him in several movies said, "I saw his first three hits in the theater, and I've never seen a more exciting stage actor."
Gazzara's feature debut came as a card player in "I'll Cry Tomorrow" (1955), but he logged his first significant screen time as star of "The Strange One" (1957), the movie adaptation of "End as a Game". His next film, "Anatomy of a Murder" (1959), also tapped his reserves of darkness, depicting him as one-half of a totally amoral couple (with Lee Remick) and the accused killer of an equally unsavory tavern owner who reportedly raped his wife. After former district attorney James Stewart gets him acquitted for having acted under "an irresistible impulse," Gazzara, completely in step with his haughty, callous character, beats town (with Remick), leaving behind a note for Stewart that says he had an "irresistible impulse" not to pay his legal fees. The slick soaper "Young Doctors" allowed the actor to channel his intensity into the role of a righteous young doctor sparring with an older physician (Fredric March at the top of his game), and "Convicts 4" (both 1961) cast him as an unruly prisoner serving a life sentence, whose life suddenly changes when his artistic talents flower, a part revealing the combination of toughness and sensitivity that would become a hallmark of the actor's persona.
As for TV, Gazzara started out in the medium as early as 1952, making appearances on anthology series such as "Danger" (CBS) and "Kraft Television Theatre" (NBC), but shied away from roles as a series regular until playing the cop who makes the collar in "Arrest and Trial" (ABC, 1963-64), only to see Chuck Connors as a defense attorney try to get the indicted found not guilty week after week. He had more success with "Run for Your Life" (NBC, 1965-68), in which he was the terminal Paul Bryan who was going to do everything he always wanted to do before the end came. Given only two years to live, Gazzara was still on the run three years (and two Emmy nominations) later when the network finally canceled the show much to his relief. "I was sad all the time, and felt that 'Run for Your Life' was below the quality of work I wanted to do. Playing the same guy in predictable situations year after year felt like factory work and I was bored." It was about this time that he began his association with pioneering independent filmmaker John Cassavetes, a fertile friendship that would last until Cassavetes' death in 1989.
Though Gazzara and Cassavetes played card players in Mel Stuart's "If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium" (1969), they began their collaboration in earnest with Cassavetes' "Husbands" (1970), the memorably touching, human and funny story of three middle-aged buddies (Gazzara, Cassavetes and Peter Falk), whose best friend's death triggers a mid-life crisis and a marathon New York to London debauch, unleashing them as the uncoolest trio of married men ever to go on the make. A little more editing from the director, and the movie might have transcended its self-indulgence to become one of the year's best pictures. Cassavetes' "The Killing of a Chinese Bookie" (1976), on the other hand, was a complete waste, an amateurish home movie in search of a script, starring Gazzara as a Los Angeles strip-club operator who must pay off his debt to the mob by knocking off an elderly Chinese bookie. He took a supporting role in the much better (occasionally brilliant) "Opening Night" (1977, starring the director and his wife Gena Rowlands) and also acted with Cassavetes in the Steve Carver stinker, "Capone", having some fun as the title character, fishing in his swimming pool as syphilis rotted his brain.
"Opening Night" introduced Gazzara to Bogdanovich (on hand as an extra) who cast him as "Saint Jack" (1979), an amiable, ambitious pimp flourishing in the Singapore of the early 70s. Based on the novel by Paul Theroux, this absorbing character study made fantastic use of the location milieu and helped the director regain some of the critical respect he lost with "Daisy Miller" (1974) and "At Long Last Love" (1975). Gazzara also acted opposite Audrey Hepburn in Bogdanovich's "They All Laughed" (1981) and contributed to the Reverend Sung Myung Moon-produced Korean War pic "Inchon" (1982) before moving to Europe where he made all of his remaining features of the 80s except "Road House" (1989). His best US screen work during this period was his Emmy-nominated performance (as Rowlands' husband) in "An Early Frost" (NBC, 1985), which boasted Aidan Quinn as their son, a young lawyer with AIDS. After initially rejecting his son, Gazzara keeps him from committing suicide and finally accepts him for who he is, as well as coming to terms with his impending death. He rounded out the decade with his feature directing (and co-screenwriting) debut, the Italian picture "Beyond the Ocean" (1990).
Gazzara's Broadway appearances in 1974 ("Hughie" and "Duet") and 1976 (playing George opposite Colleen Dewhurst's Martha in the revival of Edward Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?") had netted Tony nominations, and though his 1992 return in the short-lived "Shimada" was less auspicious, he was back on the NYC boards two years later in "Chinese Coffee". He continued working in European features and American TV-movies until his rediscovery by a new generation of directors schooled in Cassavetes suddenly made him one of the hottest character actors around. An ensemble member of David Mamet's fine "The Spanish Prisoner" (1997), he popped up as a pornographer in the Coen brothers' "The Big Lebowski", Vincent Gallo's Buffalo Bills-obsessed father (opposite Anjelica Huston as his wife) in Gallo's "Buffalo 66", a famous artist squiring a much younger Korean girlfriend in Wonsuk Chun's "Too Tired to Die" and a husband walking away from 40 years of marriage in Todd Solondz's "Happiness" (all 1998).
Gazzara played a turn-of-the-century acting company's senior thespian who has lost his memory in John Turturro's "Illuminata" (1999), a film mining Cassavetes and classic French bedroom farces, and then appeared in Spike Lee's "Summer of Sam" later that year. Prior to his recent flurry of activity, "Quinlan's Registry of Stars" had described him as the "dark, floridly good-looking Italianate leading actor whose career has been one of much promise but little fulfillment." Revitalized in the late 1990s, he has numerous projects in the pipeline including one ("Wait for Me") that would not only reunite him with Bogdanovich (also on an upswing) as director but also fellow Cassavetes' alums Rowlands and Falk as co-stars. As he proceeds to fulfill his promise in his golden years, he may force more than one scribe to rewrite the book on Ben Gazzara.