Actor Ben Gazzara dies at age 81

Ben Gazzara, an actor who made his mark on stage, television and film, died Friday at the age of 81 in Manhattan.

Gazzara’s lawyer, Jay Julien, confirmed his death to the New York Times. Julien told the Times that the cause of death was pancreatic cancer.

According to The Los Angeles Times, Gazzara, who was born to Sicilian immigrants in New York on Aug. 28, 1930, attended Manhattan’s Dramatic Workshop in 1951. He later attended the Actor’s Studio and would go on to be a major figure on the Broadway stage in the 1950s, playing Brick in the first production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

As The New York Times notes, Gazzara was initially apprehensive to take the leap into films, telling Charlie Rose in 1998, “When I became hot, so to speak, in the theater, I got a lot of offers...I won’t tell you the pictures I turned down because you would say, ‘You are a fool.’ And I was a fool.”

Still, Gazzara would appear in countless important films, from Otto Preminger’s 1959 classic Anatomy of a Murder, in which he plays a man accused of murder and defended by James Stewart, to Joel and Ethan Coen’s The Big Lewbowski in 1998. Gazzara also starred in a series of films by the influential indie director John Cassettes, including Husbands (1970), The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976) and Opening Night (1977).

Gena Rowlands, Cassavettes’ wife who worked with Gazzara and the late Peter Falk in her husband’s films, released a statement to the LA Times. "It breaks my heart to have this era come to an end...Ben meant so much to all of us. To our families. To John. To Peter. To have them gone now is devastating to me,” she wrote.

On television, Gazzara was known for appearing in dramas and television films, including Run For Your Life from 1965 to 1968, for which he earned two Emmy nominations. He was also nominated for an Emmy for appearing in NBC’s 1985 television film An Early Frost and finally won an Emmy for HBO’s Hysterical Blindness in 2002.

Gazzara continued to work on the stage throughout his life, making his final appearance on Broadway in the 2006 revival of Awake and Sing!.

Gazzara is survived by his third wife, Elke, whom he married in 1982 and their daughter. According to the NY Times, he is also survived by Elke’s daughter from a previous relationship, who Gazzara adopted, and his brother, Anthony.