Please Rewind Talent Wall

Andre Gregory

Andre Gregory has built a career in which acting, writing and theatre direction are difficult to separate—and that is much of what makes his screen work so distinctive. Born André William Josefowitz in Paris on May 11, 1934, he left France with his Russian Jewish family for London in 1939 before they moved to the United States. He grew up in Los Angeles, and found his love of acting at 12, while playing Petruchio in Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. After studying at Harvard University, Gregory became a major figure in experimental theatre. He served as artistic director of Philadelphia’s Theatre of the Living Arts and founded The Manhattan Project in 1968. Its collaborative productions included a celebrated 1970 adaptation of Alice in Wonderland. His 1975 production of Wallace Shawn’s first produced play, Our Late Night, began a creative partnership that would continue across theatre and film. Gregory’s best-known screen performance came in Louis Malle’s My Dinner with Andre (1981). Co-written with Shawn, the film places fictionalized versions of the two men across a restaurant table for an extended conversation about theatre, spiritual searching and Western civilization. Gregory’s open, searching presence gives the movie its unusual charge. He and Shawn received the Boston Society of Film Critics award for Best Screenplay, while the film was named Best American Film of 1981 by the group. His other character roles include Reverend Spellgood in The Mosquito Coast, John the Baptist in The Last Temptation of Christ, Dante in The Linguini Incident, and appearances in Protocol, Some Girls and Demolition Man. Yet theatre remained central. Gregory spent years developing an intimate workshop of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, adapted by David Mamet and featuring Shawn and Julianne Moore; a filmed rehearsal became Vanya on 42nd Street in 1994. Later collaborations with Shawn included The Designated Mourner, Grasses of a Thousand Colors and a new version of The Master Builder, which led to the film A Master Builder. Gregory’s work consistently treats performance not as display, but as a way of testing ideas, relationships and the uneasy space between art and life.