Jack Garfein

Jakob Garfein (July 2, 1930 – December 30, 2019) was an American film and theatre director, writer, teacher, producer, and key figure of the Actors Studio. Growing up in Bardejov, Czechoslovakia during the rise of Nazism, Garfein was deported to Auschwitz at the age of 13 and survived 11 concentration camps. In 1946, as an orphaned teen, he was among an early group of Holocaust survivors to arrive in the U.S, and he obtained his American citizenship in 1952. After studying at the Dramatic Workshop in New York, Garfein became the first theater director to be awarded membership in the Actors Studio. He put on its first-ever play to move to Broadway, End as a Man (1953), and expanded the influence of Method Acting to Hollywood with the founding of Actors Studio West, alongside Paul Newman, in 1966. He was a teacher to actors Sissy Spacek, Ron Perlman, Irène Jacob, James Thierrée, Laetitia C...