JILL CLAYBURGH RIP - REMEMBRANCE

Jill Clayburgh has passed away at 66 after a long battle with leukemia.

I took a master class (acting with camera) with Jill at HB Studio some years ago. She was a brilliant and supportive teacher. She had elegance and grace. Jill had been a student of Uta Hagen, and carried on HB Studio's great tradition of teaching the art of naturalistic, rich performance. Sometimes she was kind and sometimes she was strict -- especially strict, it seemed to me, with women who did not find all the richness possible in their roles.

She sometimes spoke, in an incidental way during the class, with warmth and pride about her family. (Her husband was David Rabe the playwright. Her daughter, Lily Rabe, has been a steadily rising actress, and did great work as Portia this summer in The Merchant of Venice for Shakespeare in the Park. Lily just left the previews of Merchant of Venice on Broadway for a few days to be with her mother.)

In the class, Jill encouraged me in some projects I was working on, even allowing me to bring in an actress that I was working with (who was not at HB) and coaching us before a performance. She was one of the very finest and most influential acting teachers I ever had.

I saw her in a number of plays after the class. She was always brilliant... especially memorable were her work in Barefoot in the Park and A Naked Girl On The Appian Way.

One fond memory I have: I waited for her at the stage-door after Barefoot, and she greeted me with such warmth, it pleases me to this day.

Her career in theater, film and TV has been immense:

JILL CLAYBURGH in WIKIPEDIA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jill_Clayburgh

JILL CLAYBURGH in IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001049/

JILL CLAYBURGH in IBDB
http://www.ibdb.com/person.php?id=35535

JILL CLAYBURGH in Off-Broadway Lortel Archives
http://www.lortel.org/LLA_archive/index.cfm?search_by=people&first=Jill&last=Clayburgh&middle=


I will miss her.