Acting workshop By 1956, Cassavetes had begun teaching an alternative to
method acting in his own workshop—co-founded with friend Burt Lane in New York City—in which performance would be based on character creation rather than back-story or narrative requirements. Cassavetes particularly scorned
Lee Strasberg's Method-based
Actors Studio, and the Cassavetes-Lane approach held that acting should be an expression of creative joy rather than the "moody, broody anguish" associated with Strasberg's teaching. However, Cassavetes was so dissatisfied with the audience's response that he reshot and re-edited much of the film, and premiered the second version in November 1959 as part of Amos Vogel's Cinema 16 series. Cassavetes was unable to gain American distribution of
Shadows, but it won the Critics Award at the
Venice Film Festival. European distributors later released the movie in the United States as an import. Although the box-office returns of
Shadows in the United States were slight, it did gain attention from the Hollywood studios.
Television and acting jobs Cassavetes played bit-parts in
B pictures and in television serials, until gaining notoriety in 1955 as a vicious killer in
The Night Holds Terror, and as a juvenile delinquent in the live TV drama
Crime in the Streets. Cassavetes would repeat this performance credited as an “introducing” lead in the 1956 film version, which also included another future director,
Mark Rydell, as his gang mate. His first starring role in a feature film was
Edge of the City (1957), which co-starred
Sidney Poitier. He was briefly under contract to
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and co-starred with
Robert Taylor in the western
Saddle the Wind, written by
Rod Serling. In the late 1950s, Cassavetes guest-starred in
Beverly Garland's groundbreaking
crime drama,
Decoy, about a New York City woman police undercover detective. Thereafter, he played
Johnny Staccato, the title character in a television series about a jazz pianist who also worked as a private detective. In total he directed five episodes of the series, which also features a guest appearance by his wife Gena Rowlands. It was broadcast on
NBC between September 1959 and March 1960, and then acquired by
ABC; although critically acclaimed, the series was cancelled in September 1960. Cassavetes would appear on the NBC interview program, ''
Here's Hollywood''.
1960s In 1961 Cassavetes signed a seven-year deal with Paramount. Cassavetes directed two movies for Hollywood in the early 1960s:
Too Late Blues (1961);
A Child Is Waiting (1963) starring
Burt Lancaster and
Judy Garland. He starred in the CBS western series
Rawhide in the episode
Incident Near Gloomy River (1961). In the 1963–1964 season he was cast in the ABC
medical drama about
psychiatry,
Breaking Point. In 1964, he again co-starred with his wife, this time in an episode of
The Alfred Hitchcock Hour anthology program, and in 1965, he appeared on ABC's western series,
The Legend of Jesse James. In the same year, he also guest-starred in the
World War II series
Combat!, in the episode "S.I.W.", and as the insane nuclear scientist Everett Lang in
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, season 2, episode "The Peacemaker". in ''
Rosemary's Baby'' (1968) With payment for his work on television, as well as a handful of film acting jobs, he was able to relocate to California and to make his subsequent films independent of any studio, as
Shadows had been made. The films in which he acted with this intention include
Don Siegel's
The Killers (1964), the motorcycle gang movie ''
Devil's Angels (1967), The Dirty Dozen'' (1967), for which he was nominated for an
Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, the Guy Woodhouse lead (originally intended for
Robert Redford) in
Roman Polanski's ''
Rosemary's Baby (1968), and The Fury (1978). Cassavetes portrayed the murderer in a 1972 episode of the TV crime series Columbo, titled "Étude in Black". Cassavetes and series star Peter Falk had previously starred together in the 1969 mob action thriller Machine Gun McCain''. The two later starred in Elaine May's film
Mikey and Nicky (1976).
Faces (1968) was the second film to be both directed and independently financed by Cassavetes. The film starred his wife Gena Rowlands—whom he had married during his struggling actor days—
John Marley,
Seymour Cassel and
Val Avery, as well as several first-time actors, such as lead actress
Lynn Carlin and industry fringies like Vince Barbi. It depicts the slow disintegration of a contemporary marriage. The film reportedly took three years to make, and was made largely in the Cassavetes home.
Faces was nominated for three Academy Awards:
Best Original Screenplay, and
Best Supporting Actress. Around this time, Cassavetes formed "Faces International" as a distribution company to handle all of his films.
1970s in 1971 In 1970, Cassavetes directed and acted in
Husbands, with actors Peter Falk and
Ben Gazzara. They played a trio of married men on a spree in New York and London after the funeral of one of their best friends. Cassavetes stated that this was a personal film for him; his elder brother had died at the age of 30.
Minnie and Moskowitz (1971), about two unlikely lovers, featured Rowlands and Cassel.
A Woman Under the Influence (1974) stars Rowlands as an increasingly troubled housewife. Rowlands received an Academy Award nomination for
Best Actress, while Cassavetes was nominated for
Best Director. In
The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976), Gazzara plays a small-time strip-club owner with an out-of-control gambling habit, pressured by mobsters to commit a murder to pay off his debt. In
Opening Night (1977), Rowlands plays the lead alongside Cassavetes; the film also stars Gazzara and
Joan Blondell. Rowlands portrays an aging film star named Myrtle Gordon, who is working in the theater and suffering a personal crisis. Alone and unloved by her colleagues, afraid of aging and always removed from others due to her stardom, she succumbs to alcohol and hallucinations after witnessing a young fan accidentally die. Ultimately, Gordon fights through it all, delivering the performance of her life in a play. Rowlands won the
Silver Bear for Best Actress at the
28th Berlin International Film Festival for her performance.
1980s Cassavetes directed the film
Gloria (1980), featuring Rowlands as a Mob
moll who tries to protect an orphan boy whom the Mob wants to kill, which earned her another Best Actress nomination. In 1982, Cassavetes starred in
Paul Mazursky's
Tempest, which co-starred Rowlands,
Susan Sarandon,
Molly Ringwald,
Raul Julia and
Vittorio Gassman. Cassavetes penned the stage play
Knives, the earliest version of which he allowed to be published in the 1978 premiere issue of
On Stage, the quarterly magazine of the American Community Theatre Association, a division of the American Theatre Association. The play was produced and directed as one of his
Three Plays of Love and Hate at Hollywood, California's Center Theater in 1981. The trio of plays included versions of Canadian playwright
Ted Allan's
The Third Day Comes and
Love Streams, the latter of which served as the blueprint for Cassavetes' 1984 film of the same name. Cassavetes starred in
Marvin & Tige (1983), also titled
Like Father & Son, an American drama film directed by Eric Weston and written by Wanda Dell and Eric Weston based on a novel by Frankcina Glass. Marvin (played by Cassavetes), a heavy-drinking widower who has seen better days and makes a living taking odd jobs, meets suicidal youngster Tige (played by child actor Gibran Brown).
Billy Dee Williams also appeared in the film in a supporting role. Cassavetes made the
Cannon Films-financed
Love Streams (1984), which featured him as an aging playboy who suffers the overbearing affection of his recently divorced sister. It was entered into the
34th Berlin International Film Festival where it won the
Golden Bear. The film is often considered Cassavetes' "last film" in that it brought together many aspects of his previous films. He despised the film
Big Trouble (1986), which he took over during filming from
Andrew Bergman, who wrote the original screenplay. Cassavetes came to refer to the film as "The aptly titled 'Big Trouble,'" since the studio vetoed many of his decisions for the film and eventually edited most of it in a way with which Cassavetes disagreed. In January 1987, Cassavetes was facing health problems, but he wrote the three-act play
Woman of Mystery and brought it to the stage in May and June at the Court Theatre, Los Angeles. Cassavetes worked during the last year of his life to produce a last film that was to be titled ''She's Delovely''. He was in talks with
Sean Penn to star, though legal and financial hurdles proved insurmountable and the project was forgotten about until after Cassavetes' death, when his son
Nick finally directed it as ''
She's So Lovely'' (1997). ==Filmmaking style==