The rehearsal room was full of pert young men and women, aspiring actors hoping to hone their skills for careers on the screen or on the stage. Then there was Budd Holden. His hair was chalk white. His movements were slow and deliberate. He had the dignified manner of a maître d’ in a four-star restaurant. 

Mr. Holden describes his situation this way: “I feel like I’ve died and gone to grandpa heaven. All these kids. I get nothing but hugs and kisses from them.”
At 75, Mr. Holden is the oldest of the 700 students at the renowned Lee 
Strasberg Theater and Film Institute near Union Square. Maureen McNeil, the institute’s administrative director, could not recall if it had ever had an older student. The vast majority of students, who come from around the United States and beyond, are in their 20’s and 30’s.

For Mr. Holden, embarking on an acting career as a septuagenarian was a matter less of late-blooming ambition than of simple coping. He turned to acting after his partner of 12 years, Brian Sullivan, died of a lung infection two years ago. Consumed by grief, Mr. Holden thought that acting might help ease his pain. It was a dream of his when he was younger but one he had never pursued because, as he recalls, “I was so skinny then, and much too shy for the camera.” 

When Mr. Holden applied to the Strasberg last December, Ms. McNeil asked him a question posed to all prospective students: Was there anything he would not want to do as an actor? He wouldn’t mind acting nude, Mr. Holden replied; he didn’t want to play only old men or invalids. He plans to study at the institute for two years. 

Since classes began earlier this year, Mr. Holden has enthusiastically embraced Method acting, the technique for which the school is famed and in which students draw on personal experiences to help embody a character.

Students are discouraged from relying on anything that happened in the past seven years, which for Mr. Holden is easy. “If you’re 20 and take 7 years off,” he said, “you probably can’t find a mother who’s died, or a lover who left you.” 

A circuitous route led him to the school. The other day, sitting in his Chelsea loft, elaborately appointed with Queen Anne chairs and 18th-century portraits, Mr. Holden recalled growing up tending chickens and pigs on his family’s farm near Woodstock, N.Y.; studying architecture at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn; serving in Germany during the Korean War; and working as an art director for “The Dinah Shore Show.” In 1995, after a career as an architect and designer, he and a friend started a pharmaceutical company.

Students at the Strasberg Institute say they are grateful to have an older man available to play older-man parts in scenes from works like “All About Eve,” “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” and “Prelude to a Kiss.” “Before Budd came,’’ said Charmaine Strange, a student from Australia, “I felt pretty old because I’m 29 and everyone else was, like, 19. Budd’s the man.”

Teachers have also taken note of him, as much for his talent as for his age. On a recent afternoon, in a fourth-floor rehearsal room, Mr. Holden found himself on stage playing the role of middle-aged, middle-class Peter in Edward Albee’s “Zoo Story” opposite Ryan Mooney, a 22-year-old from Staten Island who portrayed Jerry, a lonely, disheveled young man wandering through Central Park.

A pipe clenched between his teeth, Mr. Holden fumbled for his glasses in a jacket pocket, and sat on a bench reading a book until his solitude was interrupted. By the scene’s end, the teacher, Chad Burton, applauded heartily and commended Mr. Holden for performing the part “just the way it should be played.” 

Ms. McNeil, too, sees promise in him. “He’s hard-working, he’s mature and he’s an artist,” she said. “There are lots of parts for older men. Budd could certainly break into that market.” 

Copyright © Global Action on Aging
Terms of Use  |  Privacy Policy  |  Contact Us