JUST DO IT

Acting Coach Milton Katselas

has turned years of class into life lessons for all in a new book

BY

Rachel Fischer, Staff Writer

Westside Weekly

Sunday, September 15, 1996

The way Milton Katselas has learned to paint is typical of the way he’s done everything in his life.

Living in New York in the 1960’s, the now legendary acting teacher and theater director was dating a woman who was an artist – so he decided he would be one also.

“So I picked up a brush and I stayed up for 72 hours, painting,” he said.

“Simple as that?” asked an incredulous visitor.

Indeed, it is just as simple as that for Katselas – interviewed recently in an artist’s studio that snakes behind his theatre company’s Hollywood venue, the Skylight Theatre.

It’s the same way Katselas decided to get into the book business – he’s renovating the former Chatterton’s bookstore space in front of the Skylight with business partners including actor Tony Danza, a former student.

A bookstore for a man more familiar with the stage than the cash register? Why not, shrugged Katselas: “I always wanted a bookstore, so I decided to have one.”

The simple logic behind such tales is what brought Katselas the reverence he commands in the acting world.

As head of The Beverly Hills Playhouse’s acting school, he presides over some 400 students. Although most of his pupils are what Katselas called “New York – type” working actors and not superstars, he has instructed Michelle Pfeiffer, Ted Danson, and Jim Carrey.

Last year’s Los Angeles Drama Critics’ Circle awards were a veritable Katselas love fest. The Matrix Theatre’s production of Chekhov’s “The Seagull,” which he directed, and a tribute to Dylan Thomas, “Dylan,” put on by the Theatre Group, composed of his students, each won two awards.

If all that weren’t enough for one person, Katselas has added another title before his name: best-selling author. “Dreams into Action,” his motivational career tome based on guidelines given to his pupils over the years, has helped his philosophy cross over to everyone from secretaries to carpenters. Katselas, for years a household name in acting circles, has now “gone public,” evidence by a recent appearance on Oprah.”

But one of the probable few in the acting world not impressed with Milton Katselas is Milton Katselas.

“I don’t have any high-faultin’ notions of myself,” said the white-bearded acting teacher, whose conversation includes first-name-only references to such past acquaintances as Tennessee Williams. “I just get actors to want to work and (handle) their careers.”

A native of Pittsburgh, Katselas grew up a jock but made the switch to acting at Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie Mellon University) on instinct and later moved to New York to pound the pavement. He stopped director Elia Kazan on the street using their shared Greek heritage as a calling card, and ended up working for him; using the same approach with famed acting teacher Lee Srtasberg gave him an in at the actors studio. Acting led to directing and teaching for Katselas, who declines to specify his age.

The West Hollywood resident isn’t exactly sure what it is he’s doing right in his career. “The only thing I can say is that I try to be very constructive,” he said of his teaching approach. “There’s the craft that I teach, but at the same time I teach that attitude monitors talent – it monitors your job, your life, everything.”

In the quest for the perfect performance from a pupil, Katselas can be tough. He asks that his students not drink or take drugs 24 hours before a class, and he’s been known to give a student who is not progressing professionally a “deadline” to either get an acting job or leave the class.

“I call it terrorist theater,” he said with a hearty laugh. As a teacher, Katselas said, “I’ve done many things that are off the wall”- including telling an actor rehearsing “Macbeth” to read his lines in Italian because it brought out his passion.

Katselas philosophy-that people spend too much time thinking and too little time taking action-has been attracting people from many professions.

But not everyone he instructs makes it in Hollywood, and he has learned not to take it personally.

“I use to kick myself if I failed with a student or that one,” said Katselas, who added that he shares in the newfound happiness of a student who decided to quit the acting business and become a teacher. “I’ll go to his class and watch him teach.” He said with a smile. “I want to see what he does.”