The Star of His Own Show
Disillusioned students of legendary L.A. acting teacher Milton Katselas
accuse him of greed, despotism, and worse. 
What's their motivation? 

Buzz
3/1998

By Randye Hoder 

The small Beverly Hills theater is filled to capacity - a handful of
stragglers stand in the aisles or sit on the floor - when Milton
Katselas makes his entrance. Broad shouldered with graying, swept-back
hair and beard, his presence immediately fills the room. The chatter
stops, and everyone falls silent for a moment. Then suddenly all rise
and burst into applause. 

Katselas smiles, nods, and thanks his audience before taking his place
front-row center in the only unoccupied seat in the theater. Accustomed
to the kind of standing ovation normally reserved for the star of a
show, Katselas - acting coach, director, artist, writer - is here to
teach others how to turn a performance worthy of such kudos. 

The houselights are dimmed, except for the small reading lamp that is
attached to Katselas's high-backed swivel chair, and the first scene
immediately begins. It's from the feature film Green Card, a comedy
about a young woman who agrees to marry a French immigrant so that he
can live legally in America. The scene opens with the lead actress -
alone on stage - crying because she is sure that an imminent interview
with an immigration officer will expose the sham, and she'll wind up in
jail. 

But before she can even spit out her first line, Katselas is bellowing
at her. "I don't want to go to a comedy where the actor starts off in a
pool of tears," he tells her. "This is not Hamlet.  Life, vita, not
tragedy! Cry if you must, but then bounce out of it." 

The actress starts over. But again, before she can utter even a single
word, Katselas is issuing more instructions, this time jumping up from
his chair.  "Give me more pace, more energy," he says, his arms
flailing. "You have been studying here a long time, and you should know
by now - give me life. This play needs life." 

And so the stage is set.  Katselas interrupts the actors with a
suggestion here, a nudge there, a dose of criticism, and a dollop of
praise. His mantra: "Do you understand? Do you get what I'm trying to
say to you?" 

He tells the leading man, a young French actor who he believes has true
star potential, that he should "dominate" the scene. When the actor
looks nonplussed, Katselas sends his assistant scurrying off to retrieve
a dictionary. He then reads aloud the definition of the word dominate:
"to rule or control... to tower over, to rise above." 

Still, the actors are not connecting. For the next hour Katselas
continues to tweak the performance, and then something remarkable begins
to happen: Line by line, moment by moment, action by action, the scene
gets better. 

Prodded by the master, the leading man begins to use his body in an
exaggerated way - the perfect touch of buffoonery. His costar, for her
part, gradually relaxes and begins to connect with the Frenchman. 

As a director, Katselas says, he is compelled to find the right actor
for a particular part, rejecting others in the process.  But as an
acting coach, he must find the best in everyone, whatever their level of
talent.  "When I teach, my job is to bring out whatever is possible," he
says. "It's not my job to push the ejector seat on somebody's dreams." 

For many actors in L.A., being critiqued by Katselas has become a rite
of passage. Since he founded his studio at the Beverly Hills Playhouse
in 1978, thousands have passed through its doors to study with the
teacher that many consider a master, including Michelle Pfeiffer, George
Clooney, Ted Danson, Tony Danza, Tyne Daly, and Mel Harris. Not
surprisingly, given that roster of talent, scores of actors are vying to
get into Katselas's invitation-only Saturday class. 

"I was a good actor before I began studying with Milton," says Jeffrey
Tambor, best known for his role as sidekick Hank Kingsley on The Larry
Sanders Show. "But I am a much better actor now. That is the beginning,
the middle, and the end of all study: `Are you better?'" 

Tambor, who recently finished filming Meet Joe Black with Anthony
Hopkins and Brad Pitt, says that on the set he constantly thought back
to lessons learned from Katselas.  "There was not one day that I didn't
use some technique or advice that I got from studying with Milton," he
says. "His perceptions are brilliant. This is probably one of the best
times in my career, and I owe that to Milton." 

The 65-ish Katselas (he won't reveal his exact age) first made his
reputation as a theater director in New York, working on the original
1960 production of Edward Albee's The Zoo Story.  He was nominated for a
Tony Award for the Broadway production of Butterflies Are Free in 1969,
and also directed the 1972 movie version starring Goldie Hawn, Edward
Albert, and Eileen Heckart, who won an Academy Award for her role. His
other credits include the Broadway shows Camino Real and The Rose
Tattoo, local productions of The Seagull, Romeo and Juliet, and
Streamers - all of which won him L.A. Drama Critics Circle awards for
best direction. 

"Milton Katselas is probably the most insightful and knowledgeable
teacher and director of actors that I know," says Gene Reynolds, who
produced the first five years of M*A*S*H and Lou Grant and directed
several episodes of each and who, along with many others on that side of
the camera, also studies with Katselas. 

"He is absolutely brilliant," adds Joseph Stern, the producing artistic
director of the Matrix Theatre Co. in L.A. 

Many other actors and directors around town echo those sentiments. And
yet for all of the accolades, there is a question about Katselas that
begs to be asked: If he's really so outstanding, why does he give so
many people the creeps? 

Milton Katselas would be the first to tell you that his classes are
about much more than just acting. "Be interested in knowing about
yourself, in knowing about life," Katselas counsels in the inch-thick
manual Acting Class, which his students are required to purchase. "Study
yourself and life, because out of this will spring the personal
viewpoint, the energy, the courage, and the individuality, which make up
the nucleus of all great artists." 

The book, much of which is written in the same touchy-feely tone that
Katselas uses in everyday conversation, offers a fair amount of
pragmatic advice ("to be sober, to be on time, to eat properly... to
maintain one's health"), a bit of unvarnished confession ("my personal
affliction was speed, right into the vein") and lots of fortune-cookie
bromides ("your whole life will have a flavor, a zest, a fullness that
is made of the finest"). 

Katselas prides himself on imparting the practical: how to interview
with a producer or director, how to deal with casting agents, how to
read for an audition. He also supplies hard-and-fast dictates on
attendance, promptness, communication, participation, cleaning up, and
much more.  "Sickness is no excuse," Katselas notes in his class
prospectus, titled "Guidelines to the Journey." If you are ill, he
explains, you are supposed to come anyway and report to one of the
class's "ethics officers," fellow students on scholarship whose job is
to enforce Katselas's rules. 

Though some people find such strict regimentation patronizing - if not a
tad cultlike - Katselas says that it is nothing more than a blueprint
for the real world. Indeed, an oft-repeated refrain is that if you had a
part in a Francis Ford Coppola movie, you wouldn't show up on the set
late or hung over or unprepared. 

"The artist must not only nurture creative talent," Katselas writes in
his acting manual, "but also manage to administer a career.  More
artists have screwed themselves up by lack of administration than by
lack of talent." 

But at the same time, there is also a more metaphysical quality to much
of what he teaches. For Katselas, being a great actor boils down largely
to what Konstantin Stanislavsky, the legendary Russian director and
teacher, once said: "The actor needs order, discipline, a love of
ethics, not only for the general understanding of his work but also and
especially for his artistic and creative purposes." 

Katselas loves quoting Stanislavsky. And Spinoza. And Schopenhauer. And
Emerson.  And Capra. And Chopra. But he doesn't hesitate to say that the
person who has contributed the most to his understanding of human nature
is the founder of the Church of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard. 

In his class, Katselas is careful not to label anything as a tenet of
Scientology, but there is no question that the church's influence seeps
into the playhouse. 

Katselas's penchant for looking up words in the dictionary comes
straight from the mores of the church. Having ethics officers in class
is an idea borrowed from the church. The importance Katselas places on
communication - "Practice getting across what you mean and what you
want" - stems from the church's bedrock beliefs. 

And the advice that Katselas dispenses to his actors is loaded with the
language of the church: There are "roller coasters" (people whose lives
take alternating turns for the better and the worse), "suppressive
people" (those who, consciously or unconsciously, make things go wrong
and hurt others), and "potential trouble sources" (those who make
trouble for themselves and others around them). 

Scientology, which boasts of being the only major new church to emerge
in the 20th century, claims millions of members around the world. And it
counts among them a stable of Hollywood stars, from Tom Cruise, Nicole
Kidman, and John Travolta to Jeffrey Tambor and Jenna Elfman. But
critics contend that the church is, as The New York Times put it in a
recent investigative report, little more than "a cult and money machine
intended to bilk the faithful." And for some actors who have been in
Katselas's class, any hint of Scientology is too much to bear. 

One 25-year-old actress, who moved to Los Angeles from Chicago to pursue
an acting career, loved the Beverly Hills Playhouse when she first
arrived. It provided a sense of community and an instant set of friends.
But after eight months of study there, she says, "I began to feel
weighted down, like my life was being consumed by this place. There was
never an overt feeling that Scientology was being taught, but by the
time I left, I started to feel as if there was a cult atmosphere. 

"It wasn't about acting as much as a way of life," she adds. "You had to
do precisely what they said or you wouldn't get ahead in your career.
You had to become a disciple of their philosophy or you would fail. It
was like Big Brother was watching over you." 

The reference to Big Brother is common among former Katselas students.
In particular, many say the ethics officers got under their skin. 

"I got called in a couple of times," says Mark Durbin, an actor who took
class with Katselas for seven months. "I felt like the kindergarten kid
who got called into the principal's office.

The ethics officers stand around like monitors against the walls with
note pads and take notes: who's late, who's talking, who's dating, who's
chewing gum." 

But Katselas downplays the influence of Scientology and defends the
structure of his class. "These rules make perfect sense," he says,
sitting during a recent afternoon in his Los Feliz art studio. "If they
are too hard for some people to follow, perhaps this isn't the right
acting class for them. 

"I've learned many things in my life, and I apply them," Katselas
continues. "But am I teaching Scientology? No, that's not what happens.
I'm interested in art.  There are a number of actors who could be helped
from very fine teaching, but who are eliminated because of some
prejudice of theirs. They don't come to me because I'm a Scientologist,
because I've been categorized... The real test is: Do a scene, get
critiqued, watch it for six months or a year. Do you improve? That's all
there is."

Though his path has taken many twists, Milton Katselas has never really
strayed very far from the world of the arts. He was born in Pittsburgh
and raised by his Greek immigrant parents, who had a tiny restaurant
right outside the gates of a Westinghouse Electric plant. Its 14 stools
and couple of booths were always packed, thanks to a combination of
delicious pie and around-the-clock shifts of factory workers eager to
devour a slice.

When Katselas was 14 years old, his father went into the movie-theater
business. "I saw all the movies - particularly the gunfighters,"
Katselas says. "I loved that. I'd see the same movie 15 times."
Katselas's father also ran a local theater company of Greek actors, and
he himself would sing. "I wasn't really interested in that," Katselas
says, "but eventually all that background sank in." 

After high school, he set off for Pittsburgh's Carnegie Tech (now
Carnegie Mellon) to study theater. On a visit to New York, he sneaked in
to watch Lee Strasberg's acting class, and he also saw renowned director
Elia Kazan on the street and chased him down. "I talked to him in Greek,
and he talked with me," Katselas recalls. "He told me, `When you finish
college, come see me.'" 

Katselas did. Following graduation in 1954, he began studying with
Strasberg and serving as an apprentice to Kazan. "I was his gofer,"
Katselas says. "What could be better?" After working with several other
big-name directors - including Josh Logan, Joseph Anthony, and Sanford
Meisner (who himself became a renowned acting teacher) - Katselas struck
out on his own, making his off-Broadway debut with The Zoo Story. 

By 1965, Katselas found himself stretching beyond the theater. His first
wife (he is twice divorced) was a painter, and one day she gave him a
canvas to work on. Having never painted before, he plied his brush for
72 hours straight, save for an occasional cold shower and bologna
sandwich. Even now, he says, he has the same passion for painting. 

At about the time that Katselas discovered painting, he became hooked on
methamphetamine - a vice, he says, that "led directly to my mishandling
two jobs and being fired from one." Then one morning he woke up, looked
at the little vial on his nightstand, and realized that it "was
responsible for how good I was going to be that day, not me." From that
point, he says, he weaned himself completely off drugs. 

In 1970, Katselas made his way to L.A. to direct The Trial of A. Lincoln
with Henry Fonda and Billy Dee Williams. He then began doing films and
TV and eventually started directing at the Old Globe Theatre and Mark
Taper Forum. In the late 1970s, he bought the Beverly Hills Playhouse,
and in 1995 he acquired the Skylight Theatre in Los Feliz. 

His classes at the two venues, which cost from $120 to $295 for each
four-week session, attract about 600 students a year. Much to the dismay
of some of them, however, Katselas teaches only the advanced class on
Saturday and drops in on others just every now and then. He leaves it to
Jeffrey Tambor and other accomplished, longtime students to lead the
rest. 

Katselas limits his time as a teacher these days because he's busy
wearing his other hats - that of director (which he plans to don more
often, as he did earlier in his career), painter, sculptor, and writer.
"The arts," Katselas says, "are bound together like a family out of the
same seed, each individual discipline strongly influencing the other." 

Katselas's 1996 self-help primer, Dreams into Action, hit several
national best-seller lists after he appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show.
In it Katselas offers his basic views on responsibility - get a desk,
return phone calls, keep your apartment clean, pay your bills - as well
as his ideas about how blame, holding a grudge, and being negative can
keep people from realizing their aspirations. 

"It's really possible for you," he writes, "to look the snake square in
the eye, transform its poison into a serum, its bite into a kiss, its
coiled strangulation into an embrace, its mesmerizing dance into your
tango." 

Not all of those who have problems with Katselas are spooked by his
Scientology or his emphasis on life lessons.  Rather, some students are
put off by a sense that they're required to provide patronage for their
teacher's other endeavors - namely, his painting and writing. 

All of Katselas's students are regularly invited - some for "private
showings" - to Gallery 258, a space he owns that is adjacent to the
Beverly Hills Playhouse on Robertson Boulevard. Katselas's most recent
exhibit was a collection of photographs that he took on a trip to China,
Japan, Mongolia, and India. 

"I understand you exploit your market, but this can take advantage of
students who are vulnerable," says Lee Strauss, an actress who otherwise
considers Katselas a genius.  "They want to please him or be a part of
him." 

Another former student, who also swears by Katselas as a teacher, says
he tried to focus on the acting and ignore those aspects of the class
that he found disconcerting. But ultimately, after two years, he left.
"I didn't like getting called on the side for a so-called private
showing and then asked to put down $2,500 on a painting," he says. "I
heard stories about actors with very little money encouraged to purchase
a piece of art `to support the arts.'" 

When Dreams into Action came out, there was a huge rally at Raleigh
Studios to celebrate its publication. Katselas arrived in a limousine,
and students were "required" to come; attendance was taken. Students say
they were encouraged to buy anywhere from four to 10 books, so they
could give them away to others. 

Gary Grossman, producer for Katselas Productions (the umbrella company
for all his ventures), says that Katselas expects nothing more of his
students than he is willing to give them. 

"We asked his students to buy the book. Absolutely!" Grossman says. "It
is who he is.  His philosophies. They should buy it." But Grossman is
quick to point out that he and Katselas recently went to watch a play in
Laguna Beach where one of Katselas's students was performing. 

"We want students to support each other," Grossman says.  "We hold this
very dear. We do that for each other here.  Whether it is Milton's book
or John's play or Sue appearing at the Gardenia Lounge, support is
support. That's what this group is. It is a safe space, and Milton makes
it that way." 

For every Katselas critic, there are many devotees. For every person who
finds his words of wisdom a little unctuous, there are many who say he's
transformed their lives. 

"You can go into any acting class in L.A. and there are people who will
walk out and have a cigarette, come late, eat lunch in class. It is very
loose," says Jenna Elfman, who was recently nominated for a Golden Globe
Award for her lead role in the hit show Dharma & Greg.  "But in Milton's
classes, the ethics officers are there to make sure that things are
going well so that you can flourish, so that you don't get in your own
way." 

Elfman says that those who find the most fault with Katselas tend to be
the ones "who are just not doing as well as they could be" with their
careers and are looking for a scapegoat. 

Richard Lawson, an actor and director who has studied with Katselas for
21 years, goes so far as to credit his guru with helping to save his
life. 

It was March 22, 1992, when Lawson boarded USAir Flight 405 at La
Guardia Airport. But right after takeoff, there was trouble. Hampered by
ice on its wings, the Fokker 28-4000 jetliner veered sharply and
careened into Flushing Bay. In the end, 27 people died in the crash. 

Lawson was nearly the 28th.  Strapped in his seat with his head
underwater, Lawson says he felt certain he was trapped, and his mind
drifted to his mother and his daughter. "I felt that if I struggled,
they would imagine that I had this horrible death," he says. "So I just
sat, preparing myself to die." 

But then, in an instant, something seized him from deep inside. "I just
got this inspiration to overcome it, to fight with everything I had to
get out," Lawson says. "One of the things I attribute that to is the
teachings of Milton... It is about choices in life. When you reach those
moments, it is about the choices that you make." 

Katselas could hardly put it better himself. "I believe with all my
heart that there is everything possible for every human being," he says.
"The only limitations of human beings are what we put on ourselves." 

As for his detractors, Katselas has a word for them, too. "Let them hang
me on a cross," he says. Then he pauses and breaks into a grin. "Oh,
that was that other guy."