Famous Friends

Item Description

Win a lunch to discuss the craft of acting and directing with two renowned and award-winning artists, Austin Pendleton and Denis O'Hare.

Austin Pendleton is an American film, television, and stage actor, a playwright, and a theatre director and instructor.  As a stage actor, he has appeared in The Last Sweet Days of Isaac (for which he won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Performance and an Obie Award ), The Diary of Anne Frank, Grand Hotel, Goodtime Charley, The Little Foxes, Fiddler on the Roof, and Up from Paradise.

Pendleton has penned plays such as Uncle Bob, Booth, and Orson's Shadow, all of which were staged off-Broadway. His direction of Elizabeth Taylor and Maureen Stapleton in Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes garnered him a Tony Award nomination.

He has had several television roles as well including a recurring role on HBO's Oz as the mentally unstable murderer William Giles.  He did voice-over work as Gurgle in Finding Nemo.

In August 2006, Pendleton appeared as the Chaplain in Bertholt Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children with Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline.  In 2007, he appeared as Friar Lawrence in the New York Shakespeare Festival/Public Theater's production of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet in Central Park.  In 2009 Pendleton directed Uncle Vanya at the Classic Stage Company starring Maggie Gyllenhall and Peter Saarsgard.  Also that year, Pendleton starred in the off-Broadway production of Love Drunk.

Denis O'Hare is an American Tony-Award winning actor.  O'Hare won a Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Play for his performance in Richard Greenberg's Take Me Out.  He also won the 2005 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Musical for his role as Oscar Lindquist in the Broadway revival of Sweet Charity.  In 2004 he played Charles J. Guiteau in the Broadway production of Stephen Sondheim's Assassins, for which he was nominated for the Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical Tony Award. 

O'Hare was featured in the Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation of Saint Maybe. He has appeared as a guest star on several episodes of Law & Order and its spin-offs, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and Law & Order: Criminal Intent.

In 2008, he has appeared as a guest star on several episodes of Brothers & Sisters. His feature film credits include The Anniversary Party, 21 Grams, Garden State, Derailed, Michael Clayton, A Mighty Heart, Half Nelson, and Milk. In 2007, he appeared in the film Charlie Wilson's War. In 2008, Changeling as Doctor Jonathan Steele, a corrupt and sadistic psychiatrist. In 2009 O'Hare portrayed Phillip Steele (an amalgam character based on Quentin Crisp's friends Phillip Ward and Tom Steele) in a television biopic on Quentin Crisp, titled An Englishman in New York. He starred in the 2010 thriller film Edge of Darkness. O'Hare will join the cast of True Blood in the third season as Russell Edgington, the vampire king of Mississippi. Recently he has appeared in a recurring role as Judge Charles Abernathy in the show The Good Wife.

Item Special Note

*Lunch will occur in NYC and will be arranged for a mutually convenient date and time

*Expires 3/1/11