Stage and Film Actor Austin Pendleton, a Warren Native, to Appear at YSU

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – Austin Pendleton, the film and television character actor, playwright and director who hails from Warren, will discuss his life and career Feb. 10 at Youngstown State University.

Dubbed “An Evening with Austin Pendleton,” the event will take place at 7 p.m. in Ford Theater, which is on the lower level of Bliss Hall, on Wick Avenue. 

Tickets are $20 and are all general admission. To purchase in advance, go to YSU.tix.com or call the YSU box office at 330 941 3105. Tickets will also be sold at the door.

Proceeds will benefit Trumbull New Theatre in Niles, which Pendleton has supported his entire life as an actor, director and patron.

The event’s unscripted and casual format will feature Pendleton talking about his extraordinary professional life. Pendleton graduated from The University School in Shaker Heights, Ohio, and from Yale in 1961.

He has made hundreds of appearances in film and TV and appeared several times in such TV shows as “Homicide,” “Oz” and “Law and Order.” His film credits include “A Beautiful Mind,” “Finding Dory,” “Finding Nemo,” “Christmas with the Kranks,” and “Amistad.”

Onstage in New York he has acted on Broadway (“Choir Boy”; “The Diary of Anne Frank,” with Natalie Portman; and as Motel the Tailor in the original cast of “Fiddler on the Roof”); and at numerous professional theaters. 

He directed the premiere of “A Thousand Pines” by Matthew Greene; “Between Riverside and Crazy” by Stephen Adly Giurgis, which went on to win the Pulitzer Prize; “Fifty Words” by Michael Weller,with Elizabeth Marvel and Norbert Leo Butz; Chekhov productions at Classic Stage Company such as “Three Sisters” (for which he won the Obie, and which starred Maggie Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard, and Jessica Hecht); “The Little Foxes,” on Broadway, with Elizabeth Taylor and Maureen Stapleton (which received five Tony Award nominations, one for direction and three for actors).

He has written three plays.

Melanie Lucas, president of Trumbull New Theatre, pointed out that Pendleton’s mother, Frances, is a founder of the Niles theater.

Published by The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.