Andréas Voutsinas

Andreas Voutsinas 22 August 1930 8 June 2010 was a SudaneseGreek actor and theater director In the Englishspeaking world he was best known for his roles in three Mel Brooks films The Producers 1967 The Twelve Chairs 1970 and History of the World Part I 1981 Voutsinas was born on 22 August 1932 in Khartoum since there was a sizeable community of Greek settlers in Sudan at the time His parents hailed from the Ionian Island of Kefalonia They set up a pasta factory in the AngloEgyptian colony reputedly supplying spaghetti to Italian forces during the Fascist invasion of Abyssinia After the collapse of the business during WWII Voutsinas moved with his mother to Athens Voutsinas studied acting and costume design at the Old Vic School and drama and song at the Webber Douglas Academy in London and in 1957 joined The Actors Studio Voutsinas directed more than 130 performances of classical and contemporary repertoire in London Paris New York Canada and Greece He worked as an actor and director on Broadway and acted in films by Jules Dassin and Luc Besson Voutsinas a life member of The Actors Studio since 1957 spent many years working in summer stock theater and as an assistant to Studio cofounder Elia Kazan before he met Jane Fonda with whom he got involved and whom he cast in the leading part in The Fun Couple his Broadway directorial debut in 1963 Voutsinas later followed Fonda to Hollywood where he coached her in a number of movies He then started working as a coach for many others including Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty Following Fonda to Paris to coach her in Roger Vadims Barbarella he decided to found Le Theatre Des Cinquante an acting workshop based on the principles of Lee Strasberg Many famous French actors and actresses started attending his classes and at the same time he successfully began directing plays for the French theater In 1968 Voutsinas became the original Carmen Ghia after befriending Mel Brookss wife Anne Bancroft She recommended him to Brooks and said Voutsinas would be perfect for the part Voutsinas had a role in another Brooks feature History of the World Part I playing the role of Bernaise in the French Revolution scenes It was not until the early 1980s that he eventually moved to his ancestral Greece where he continued his career directing a wide range of repertoire from Tennessee Williams to Euripides mainly for the State Theater of Northern Greece in Thessaloniki His productions were also staged during summer in the Athens Festival in Herodion as well as in the Epidaurus Festival He continued working between the two countries while he appeared in many French and Greek films including Le Grand Bleu 1988 and Safe Sex 1999 Andreas Voutsinas taught acting at the State Theatre of Northern Greece from 2002 to 2009 After a stroke he founded his own drama school in Thessaloniki Superior Drama School Andreas Voutsinas Voutsinas died of a respiratory tract infection on 8 June 2010 at age 79 after several days of hospitalization in Henry Dunant Hospital in Athens Source Article Andreas Voutsinas from Wikipedia in English licensed under CCBYSA 30