Add this page to:

Facebook Twitter Digg MySpace Newsvine Reddit Google Yahoo Delicious Stumbleupon

Known for:	One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, As the World Turns, Death Wish
Birthday:	26 January 1927, New York, New York, USA
Height:	5' 9¾" (1.77 m)

Father of actor Adam Redfield. Author of a famous book about acting, "Letters From An Actor" (1964). Friend of Marlon Brando. During the filming of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, one-time fellow actor and real-life Psychiatrist Dean R. Brooks diagnosed William Redfield with leukemia (this was long before the days of bone marrow transplants), and gave him 18 months to live (he died 18 months later, pretty much to the day). Played Guildenstern in the 1964 Richard Burton Hamlet directed by John Gielgud, which premiered in Toronto, was previewed in Boston and opened on Broadway on April 9, 1964 and closed on August 8, 1964 after a total of 137 performances, thus breaking the record set by John Barrymore, who himself had broken Edwin Booth's record. Burton was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play 1964 while Hume Cronyn won a Tony as Best Featured Actor in a Play as Polonius. Redfield wrote a memoir of the 1964 stage production of Hamlet directed by John Gielgud and starring Richard Burton that was captured on film. In "Letters from an Actor" (1967, Viking Press), Redfield -- who played Guildenstern -- said that his friend Marlon Brando had been considered the Great White Hope by his generation of American actors. That is, they believed that Brando's more naturalistic style, combined with his greatness as an actor, would prove a challenge to the more stylized and technical English acting paradigm epitomized by Laurence Olivier, and that Brando would supplant Olivier as the world's greatest actor. Redfield would tell Burton stories of Brando, whom the Welsh actor had not yet met. Refield sadly confessed that Brando, by not taking on roles such as Hamlet (and furthermore, by betraying his craft by abandoning the stage, thus allowing his instrument to be dulled by film work), had failed not only as an actor, but had failed to help American actors create an acting tradition that would rival the English in terms of expertise.

Site: tvguide.com ? Site type: multicelebrity site:

Description: William Redfield Episodes, TV Listings, News, Photos and More » tvguide.com: William Redfield

Site: Imdb.com ? Site type: multicelebrity site:

Description: Celebrity Main Details » imdb.com: William Redfield