Alvin Epstein

Born: 1925-05-14

Alvin Epstein (May 14, 1925 – December 10, 2018) was an American actor and director. He was a founding member of both the American Repertory Theater and Yale Repertory Theatre. He was particularly admired for his performances in the plays of Samuel Beckett. He also served as Artistic Director at the Guthrie Theater. Born in the Bronx, Epstein was the son of Harry Epstein, a physician, and his wife Goldie Epstein (née Rudnick). He graduated from the High School of Music & Art in Manhattan and the Queens College, City University of New York. After serving in the United States Army during World War II in Germany, he studied dance in New York with Martha Graham and mime in Paris. His early performances in New York City included appearing in mimes with Marcel Marceau. In 1956 he made his Broadway debut as the Fool in Orson Welles’ 1956 production of William Shakespear's King Lear. That same year he portrayed the slave Lucky in the Broadway premiere of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. Epstein continued to appear in many productions of Beckett's plays, including Clov, the servant, in the United States premiere of Endgame in 1958. He portrayed two more characters in that play during his career: Hamm, Clov’s tyrannical blind master, in a 1984 Off-Broadway production that he also directed, at the Samuel Beckett Theater; and Hamm’s aged father, Nagg, who lives in a garbage can, performed at the Irish Repertory Theatre in Manhattan in 2005 and again, in 2008, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.


Placeholder

Beauty and the Beast

as Bookseller (voice)
Released: 1991-10-22

Follow the adventures of Belle, a bright young woman who finds herself in the castle of a prince...

Movie page

Synecdoche, New York

as Man with Nose Bleed
Released: 2008-10-24

A theater director struggles with his work, and the women in his life, as he attempts to create...

Movie page

Never Met Picasso

as Uncle Alfred
Released: 1996-01-01

Still living at home with his avant-garde actress mother, constantly rejected by art schools,...

Movie page

Waiting for Godot

as Lucky
Released: 1961-01-01

Two derelicts, Vladimir and Estragon, occupy themselves as they wait for 'Godot' to make an...

Movie page

My America

as uncredited
Released: 2014-07-04

21 monologues written by American playwrights form a sort of fractured portrait of the American...

Movie page

Everybody Rides the Carousel

as Prologue (voice)
Released: 1975-06-08

Everybody Rides The Carousel invites the viewer along on eight "rides" through the different...

Movie page

Age Isn't Everything

as Dr. Hirsch
Released: 1991-01-02

Young man gives up his dream of becoming an astronaut to go into business — and finds himself...

Movie page

Story Theatre

as Ensemble Member
Released: 1969-11-28

Brothers Grimm tales like "The Golden Goose," "The Bremen Town Musicians" and "The Blue Light"...

Movie page

Doing Life

as Lou Rosenberg
Released: 1986-01-01

Tony Danza stars in this prison drama about Jerome "Jerry" Rosenburg, a self-professed...

Movie page

Engram

as uncredited
Released: 2014-01-01

An elderly woman enters a Manhattan subway station only to find herself sitting on a bench...

Movie page

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit

as Harold Lassiter
First aired: 1999-09-20

In the criminal justice system, sexually-based offenses are considered especially heinous. In...

TV Show page

Law & Order

as Dr. Chester
First aired: 1990-09-13

In cases ripped from the headlines, police investigate serious and often deadly crimes, weighing...

TV Show page

Law & Order

as Stuart Rubin
First aired: 1990-09-13

In cases ripped from the headlines, police investigate serious and often deadly crimes, weighing...

TV Show page