Elia Kazan

American director and actor (1909–2003)

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Directors rank#123
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Lived 1909–2003, aged 94United States

United States

DirectorsMovie Director

Wikipedia
73 languages
Cross-language footprint
Era
1909–2003
Aged 94
Known for
On the Waterfront
1954

Summary

Updated 2026-06-09

He directed some of the most searing American films of the 1950s—A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront, East of Eden—and co-founded the Actors Studio that taught Brando and Dean how to inhabit a role. Then in 1952 he named names before HUAC, and the industry never forgave him.

Biography

About

Born in Constantinople in 1909, Elias Kazantzoglou came to the United States at four and later joined the Group Theatre, where he learned to marry social conscience with performance. After co-founding the Actors Studio in 1947 and introducing Method Acting under Lee Strasberg, he turned to directing films that pressed on American wounds: Gentleman's Agreement took on antisemitism, Pinky confronted anti-Black prejudice, On the Waterfront exposed union corruption. Both Streetcar and Waterfront pulled twelve Oscar nominations each, the latter winning eight. Then came his 1952 testimony as a frien…

Voice

In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from Elia Kazan

Elia Kazan

said1988

He carried with him the aura of a prophet, a magician, a witch doctor, a psychoanalyst, and a feared father of a Jewish home....

— Elia Kazan: A Life (1988), p. 61 in the 1997 reprint

Elia Kazan

said1974

The Group was the best thing professionally that ever happened to me. I met two wonderful men. Lee Strasberg and Harold Clurman, both of whom were around thirty years old.

— Interview by Michel Ciment in Kazan on Kazan (Viking, 1974), pp. 15ff. Originally published 1973 by Secker and Warburg, London.

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