Ben Gazzara

Ben Gazzara, who has died aged 81, was one of the most enduring actors of his generation, appearing in a multitude of film and television roles over a period of more than half a century.

Ben Gazzara while filming an episode of 'Run for your Life'

Biagio Anthony Gazzara was born on August 28 1930 in New York City; both his parents were Sicilian immigrants, and his father, a roofer and carpenter, died young. Brought up in an Italian neighbourhood, Ben (as he was known from childhood) and his elder brother spoke Italian before they learned English.

Unhappy at Stuyvesant High School, he left after two years without telling his mother. For eight weeks he spent most of his time in cinemas before confessing his truancy to his mother, who sent him to St Simon Stock School in the Bronx, from where he graduated in 1947. His first concern was to earn a living and he embarked on an Engineering degree at night school, while working for a silversmith during the day.

It was a production in 1948 of Sartre’s Les Mouches that inspired Gazzara to turn to acting. He won a scholarship to Erwin Piscator’s Dramatic Workshop, and three years later was accepted by the Actors’ Studio, run by Lee Strasberg and the cradle of “Method” acting.

Aged 23, Gazzara was on Broadway, playing the sadistic Jocko De Paris in Calder Willingham’s stage adaptation of his novel End as a Man, about the brutality of life in a Southern military academy. He took the New York critics’ award for most promising young actor, and went on to appear as the original Brick in Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and as Johnny in A Hatful of Rain.

His screen debut came as Jocko in The Strange One (1957), a film version of End as a Man, and this led to the role of Lieutenant Manion in Otto Preminger’s courtroom drama Anatomy of a Murder (1959). Other films of this period included The Passionate Thief (1960), in which Gazzara was the pickpocket, opposite Anna Magnani; The Young Doctors (1961), in which he was an idealistic physician; and Convicts 4 (1962), where Gazzara portrayed John Resko, a real-life figure convicted of murder who became an artist while serving his prison sentence.

In between these roles, Gazzara continued to work on the stage. He had also moved into television, and in 1965 he embarked on what would become one of his best-known roles, that of Paul Bryan, for the television series Run for Your Life (1965-68) — Bryan is an adventurer who is diagnosed with a fatal illness and tries to pack in as much experience as he can in the time he has left.

Proud of his Italian heritage, Gazzara also worked extensively in Italy while continuing to appear in a range of films and television dramas in the United States.

His many other films included If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium (1969); Husbands (1970), The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976) and Opening Night (1977), all three directed by his great friend John Cassavetes; Saint Jack (1979), based on the novel by Paul Theroux; The Spanish Prisoner (1997); and The Thomas Crown Affair (1999). Despite failing health, he continued to work, appearing in Eve (2008), Christopher Roth (2010) and in Chez Gino (2011).

In 2004 he published an autobiography, In the Moment.

His first marriage, to Louise Erickson, was dissolved in 1957 and he married secondly, in 1959, the actress Janice Rule. He is survived by his third wife, Elke Krivat, whom he married in 1982, by her daughter (whom he adopted) and by a daughter of his second marriage.

Ben Gazzara, born August 28 1930, died February 3 2012