Alvin Epstein

Alvin Epstein

Born: May 14, 1925
Died: December 10, 2018
in Bronx, New York, United States
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.

Movies for Alvin Epstein...

My America
Title: My America
Released: July 4, 2014
Type: Movie
21 monologues written by American playwrights form a sort of fractured portrait of the American collective psyche. Ranging from the sad to the hilarious, from the angry to the tentatively celebratory, many of the major and recurrent issues associated with our fraught but beloved union are reconsidered with elegance, wit, brutal honesty, and a little outright insanity.
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Engram
Title: Engram
Released: January 1, 2014
Type: Movie
An elderly woman enters a Manhattan subway station only to find herself sitting on a bench beside an elderly man of roughly the same age. As they sit and wait for their train in silence, two complete strangers on a bench, what the audience soon learns that they themselves don't know, is that they once shared the happiest day of their lives, playing together as children. Yet it's now too far back for them to remember anymore, too far back for them to recognize each other anymore. The story then shifts back and forth between the breathtaking landscape of their unconscious', as Isabel Lucas and Oliver Ackland play more youthful representations of how they see themselves inside, and search for the memory they once shared.
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Synecdoche, New York
Title: Synecdoche, New York
Character: Man with Nose Bleed
Released: October 24, 2008
Type: Movie
A theater director struggles with his work, and the women in his life, as he attempts to create a life-size replica of New York inside a warehouse as part of his new play.
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Title: Law & Order: Special Victims Unit
Character: Harold Lassiter
Released: September 20, 1999
Type: TV
In the criminal justice system, sexually-based offenses are considered especially heinous. In New York City, the dedicated detectives who investigate these vicious felonies are members of an elite squad known as the Special Victims Unit. These are their stories.
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Never Met Picasso
Title: Never Met Picasso
Character: Uncle Alfred
Released: January 1, 1996
Type: Movie
Still living at home with his avant-garde actress mother, constantly rejected by art schools, and without a lover, aspiring painter Andrew decides to enter a contest in hopes of winning a six month stay in Kenya. Though things aren't great for Andrew, neither are they wonderful for his lesbian friend Lucy who constantly bickers with her lover Ingrid. Lucy complicates Andrew's life when she introduces him to the suspicious-looking, enigmatic Jerry.
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Beauty and the Beast
Title: Beauty and the Beast
Character: Bookseller (voice)
Released: October 22, 1991
Type: Movie
Follow the adventures of Belle, a bright young woman who finds herself in the castle of a prince who's been turned into a mysterious beast. With the help of the castle's enchanted staff, Belle soon learns the most important lesson of all -- that true beauty comes from within.
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Age Isn't Everything
Title: Age Isn't Everything
Character: Dr. Hirsch
Released: January 2, 1991
Type: Movie
Young man gives up his dream of becoming an astronaut to go into business — and finds himself turned into a little old man.
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Title: Law & Order
Character: Stuart Rubin
Released: September 13, 1990
Type: TV
In cases ripped from the headlines, police investigate serious and often deadly crimes, weighing the evidence and questioning the suspects until someone is taken into custody. The district attorney's office then builds a case to convict the perpetrator by proving the person guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Working together, these expert teams navigate all sides of the complex criminal justice system to make New York a safer place.
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Title: Law & Order
Character: Dr. Chester
Released: September 13, 1990
Type: TV
In cases ripped from the headlines, police investigate serious and often deadly crimes, weighing the evidence and questioning the suspects until someone is taken into custody. The district attorney's office then builds a case to convict the perpetrator by proving the person guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Working together, these expert teams navigate all sides of the complex criminal justice system to make New York a safer place.
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Doing Life
Title: Doing Life
Character: Lou Rosenberg
Released: January 1, 1986
Type: Movie
Tony Danza stars in this prison drama about Jerome "Jerry" Rosenburg, a self-professed "jailhouse lawyer" who defends himself against the homicide charge that has put him on death row. This tense movie, made in Canada, has the feel of a biographical documentary.
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Everybody Rides the Carousel
Title: Everybody Rides the Carousel
Character: Prologue (voice)
Released: June 8, 1975
Type: Movie
Everybody Rides The Carousel invites the viewer along on eight "rides" through the different stages of life. Based on the work by Erik Erikson, one of the most influential psychoanalytic theorists of this century, the film explores the inner feelings and conflicted emotions experienced during each stage of personality development. With distinctive and poetic animation, John and Faith Hubley visualize the conflicts, joys, problems and delights we all experience on the carousel of life.
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Story Theatre
Title: Story Theatre
Character: Ensemble Member
Released: November 28, 1969
Type: Movie
Brothers Grimm tales like "The Golden Goose," "The Bremen Town Musicians" and "The Blue Light" come to life in this stripped-down stage production, which forgoes elaborate sets and costumes in favor of creative acting techniques and storytelling.
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Waiting for Godot
Title: Waiting for Godot
Character: Lucky
Released: January 1, 1961
Type: Movie
Two derelicts, Vladimir and Estragon, occupy themselves as they wait for 'Godot' to make an appearance on Pozzo's estate.