André William Gregory (bornAndré William Josefowitz; May 11, 1934) is a French-born American theatre director, writer and actor. He is best known for co-writing and starring inMy Dinner with Andre, a 1981 comedy-drama film directed byLouis Malle. Gregory studied acting atThe Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in New York City.^[1]

Gregory was born André William Josefowitz inParis, France, in 1934 toRussian Jewish parents.^[2][3] His family fled from France during theSecond World War in 1939, originally toLondon,England, before moving to the United States, where he grew up inLos Angeles.^[4][5] They changed their surname from Josefowitz to Gregory.^[5] As an adult, Gregory discovered that his father, who exported fur from the US to Russia was probably aNazi sympathizer, as he represented Russia in Germany forIG Farben, a chemical company that producedZyklon B used inconcentration camps, which could have been the reason the family moved countries.^[6][5]

Gregory's parents were extremely wealthy, and as a child Gregory spent the summers in the Los Angeles neighbourhood ofWestwood, in a house onSunset Boulevard rented to them byThomas Mann.^[5] He also recalled them throwing house parties where celebrities they met throughMarlene Dietrich were present includingMarx Brothers,Greta Garbo,Fred Astaire, andErrol Flynn.^[5] However, Gregory also claims his parents were "wretched, negligent and self-absorbed, petty and often mean" and his father in particular as "the most frightening person in my life", and he had to spend some years of his adulthood in therapy.^[5][7]

Gregory's love for acting came after he playedPetruchio in a production ofThe Taming of the Shrew when he was twelve years old.^[1][5] He studied atHarvard University, where he was affiliated withAdams House.

During the 1960s and 1970s, Gregory directed a number ofavant-garde productions developed through ensemble collaboration, the most famous of which wasAlice in Wonderland (1970), based onLewis Carroll's two classic Alice books.

In 1964, Gregory was hired as artistic director of a new company in Philadelphia,Theatre of the Living Arts. He ran the company for three years, garnering the theater national recognition, until he left in a conflict with the board of directors following the controversial premiereRochelle Owens'sBeclch in 1967.^[8]

He founded his own theatrical company, The Manhattan Project, in 1968. In 1975 he directedOur Late Night, the first produced play byWallace Shawn, which began a long working relationship between the two men.

Shortly afterward, Gregory's growing misgivings about the role of theatre in modern life, and what he felt was a trend toward fascism in the United States, led him to abruptly abandon theatre and leave the country. As described in the filmMy Dinner with Andre (1981), he traveled toPoland at directorJerzy Grotowski's invitation, where he developed a number of experimental theatrical events for private audiences. He spent several years in a variety of esoteric spiritual communities (such asFindhorn) developing an interest and practice in what could be calledNew Age beliefs.

Although Gregory left the theatre in 1975, he has returned several times to direct small productions, usually for invited audiences. These included a long-running workshop ofUncle Vanya (adapted byDavid Mamet), which was developed from 1990 to 1994 and featured Shawn andJulianne Moore. Though never publicly performed, it was released as the filmVanya on 42nd Street by Gregory andLouis Malle. He appeared as himself, directing the play featured within the film. Gregory also directed a radio production of Shawn's play,The Designated Mourner, in 2002.

His best-known film performance was as the title character inMy Dinner with Andre (1981), directed byLouis Malle, in which he and Wallace Shawn, playing characters based on themselves, have a long conversation over dinner. They discuss Gregory's spiritual sojourn in Europe and his doubts about the future of theatre and of Western civilization in general. The idea came after Gregory decided to return to theatre after many years away from it and asked Shawn to help him, who helped him develop the idea of two men with contrasting personalities in conversation. Directed byLouis Malle, it was filmed over the course of two weeks at theJefferson Hotel inRichmond, Virginia and made its premier at premiere at the 1981Telluride Film Festival and was praised byRoger Ebert.^[9][10][11] It also won the award for Best American Film of 1981 at the2nd Boston Society of Film Critics Awards and both Gregory and Shawn wonBest Screenplay at the same ceremony.

He appeared withGoldie Hawn inProtocol (1984). In 1988 he played the father inSome Girls, withJennifer Connelly andPatrick Dempsey. In 1993, he performed in the movieDemolition Man withSylvester Stallone. Othercharacter actor roles includeJohn the Baptist inThe Last Temptation of Christ and Reverend Spellgood inThe Mosquito Coast, and as Dante, a restaurateur, alongsideRosanna Arquette,David Bowie, andBuck Henry inThe Linguini Incident.

Returning to theatre, Gregory directed Shawn's playGrasses of a Thousand Colors, which premiered at theRoyal Court Theatre in London in May 2009. He next worked with Shawn on a new version ofIbsen'sThe Master Builder.^[12] This resulted in the filmFear of Falling (2013), directed byJonathan Demme. The film was retitledA Master Builder at its opening in New York in June 2014.

In 2013, he directedGrasses of a Thousand Colors andThe Designated Mourner, starring Shawn in a co-production betweenTheatre for a New Audience andThe Public Theater in New York.^[13] A 2013 documentary about Gregory's life,Andre Gregory: Before and After Dinner, was directed by his wife,Cindy Kleine.^[14] He and Kleine discussed it on the May 3, 2013, episode ofCharlie Rose.^[15] After working on it for seven years,^[6] Gregory released his memoir,This Is Not My Memoir (withTodd London; Farrar, Straus and Giroux,ISBN 9780374298548), in May 2020.^[16]

Gregory was first married to Mercedes "Chiquita" Nebelthau, a documentary filmmaker who died from cancer in 1992.^[6] They had two children together, Nicolas and Marina.^[17] In 2000, he married filmmakerCindy Kleine, who at the time of their marriage was thirty-nine, whereas Gregory was sixty-three.^[18] They have lived inTruro, Massachusetts since the early 2000s.^[6]

• André Gregory atIMDb
• Charlie Rose interview with Wallace Shawn
• Website for DocumentaryBefore and After Dinner.

• 1934 births
• Living people
• American male film actors
• American theatre directors
• Jewish American entertainers
• American people of Russian-Jewish descent
• American expatriates in Poland
• French male film actors
• French theatre directors
• French people of Russian-Jewish descent
• French expatriates in Poland
• Drama Desk Award winners
• Findhorn community
• Harvard University alumni
• Tony Award winners
• 21st-century American Jews

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