Uta Hagen Quote
Overcome the notion that you must be regular. It robs you of the chance to be extraordinary. - Uta Hagen
Are we destined to follow the same path as everyone else? You don’t have to live life like others. When you live an ordinary life, you are denying yourself the opportunity to do something incredible.
Uta Thyra Hagen (12 June 1919 – 14 January 2004) was a German-American actress and theatre practitioner. She originated the role of Martha in the 1962 Broadway premiere of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee, who called her "a profoundly truthful actress." Because Hagen was on the Hollywood blacklist, in part because of her association with Paul Robeson, her film opportunities dwindled and she focused her career on New York theatre.
She later became a highly influential acting teacher at New York's Herbert Berghof Studio and authored best-selling acting texts, Respect for Acting, with Haskel Frankel, and A Challenge for the Actor. Her most substantial contributions to theatre pedagogy were a series of "object exercises" that built on the work of Konstantin Stanislavski and Yevgeny Vakhtangov.
She was elected to the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1981. She twice won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play and received a Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1999.
Germany, daughter of Thyra A. (née Leisner), a trained opera singer, and Oskar Hagen, an art historian and musician, Hagen and her family emigrated to the United States in 1924. Though shipping records indicate that he took a position at Cornell University, his new position was in fact at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Uta was raised in Madison, Wisconsin. She appeared in productions of the University of Wisconsin High School and in summer stock productions of the Wisconsin Players. She studied acting briefly at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1936.
Born in Göttingen, After spending one semester at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where her father was the head of the department of art history, she left for New York City in 1937. Her first professional role was as Ophelia opposite Eva Le Gallienne in the title role of Hamlet in Dennis, Massachusetts, in 1936.
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