Jill Andre is a producer, director, and an actress. She was co-founder of the Pleiades Theatre Group, a non-profit organization created to develop playwrights in LA. She was also co-founder of the American Renaissance Theatre in New York. Jill was able to travel around the world as a faculty member of the University of Pittsburgh’s Semester at Sea, where she produced and directed workshops during the spring of 1993.
In LA, Jill directed Bodies Unbound, which also played at the Edinburgh Festival. Some other productions she directed include Collected Stories, Three Weeks After Paradise, Trust, Comings and Goings, and Last Summer at Bluefish Cove (co-directed with Dorothy Lyman). In New York, some of her directorial work includes Bus Stop, The Last Sortie, Navajo Memoirs, Easter Weekend, Nightgames, Chicago Impulse, and Baby Grand. One of her most pleasurable experiences was directing Bus Stop at the William Inge Festival in Kansas in 2003.
As an actress, Jill appeared on Broadway in such plays as Children of a Lesser God, The Trip Back Down, Sunrise at Campobello, and The Great White Hope, as well as many Off-Broadway and regional productions. Some of her many television and film credits include Twin Falls Idaho, And the Band Played On, Return of the Living Dead III, Ghosts of Mississippi, Lost in America, The Practice, NYPD Blue, 21 Jump Street, Picket Fences, and several soaps.
A very recent highlight was a role in a short film, The Moor—story by Russell Banks, directed and adapted by Caerthan Banks, and cast by Bonnie Gillespie—in which Jill played a woman in her eighties and, in flashback, in her fifties. It was a particularly satisfying experience, as roles like that don’t come along often. More information is available at https://imdb.com/name/nm0028149.
I didn’t. It sort of came upon me through growing up in a theatre family. My mom was an actress. My dad was a stage manager and a director and ran a little summer theatre in Cleveland. My uncle was actually one of the founders of the Cleveland Play House. I kind of grew up watching my mom go to auditions for plays and films. And I watched her work in little theatres in the Valley, as well as on and Off-Broadway.
What was your first paid gig?
I did my first movie when I was five months old. It was a fluke, of course. My mother was playing the nurse in a Bette Davis movie that I think was called From This Dark Stairway. I actually still have the funny contract with my twenty-five dollars’ pay. It was shot at Warner Bros. and we lived over on Hollywood Way at the time, having moved from New York.
So, your parents were enthusiastic about your career as a performer.
Absolutely. They were so ahead of their time. They felt so strongly that we should do whatever we really wanted to do. My mother gave us each our own names—not as a theatrical thing but as a sense of our own individuality, for us to really have that sense of ourselves. She always said that she didn’t feel we should be beholden to or tied down to a family name that we had to live up to or down to or anything like that. So, my name was Jill Andre—that was what I was given at birth—and my sister had her own name and my brother had his own name. It was really amazing. That was way back! There were five names on the mailbox and of course there was some confusion at school about why we had different names. But I love that she did that.
They were ahead of their time! Consequently, when we were little and my parents would get a job in New York, we’d get in the car and go to New York. My dad was stage-managing the revival of The Red Mill on Broadway and I was in the sixth grade. We went that year then back again another summer for my parents to do summer stock. It was just after the High School of the Performing Arts had started. I had heard about it and I said I wanted to go and my mom said, “Well, let’s think about it.” Of course, she was just itching to get back to New York at that point in time. So, they sent me on early for the audition in October. Because I had come in from California, once I was accepted, the school admitted me right away. My family wasn’t prepared to come to New York just yet, as they still had to sell our house in Santa Monica, so I lived with this wonderful couple—friends of my parents. Amazing, incredible people. Their apartment on Riverside Drive was like a museum. They knew all of these artsy, liberal, unusual people in the city. I got to live with them almost that whole first year I was at PA until the following year, when my family made the move to New York. I loved PA, but it still wasn’t about acting. Acting was an okay thing. I enjoyed it. I struggled with it at times and I wondered if it was really what I wanted to do.
I was president of the senior class at PA and Arthur Mitchell was my vice president. Dom DeLuise had preceded me at school and my dad had hired him at his musical theatre in Cleveland. Herby Gardner was one of my closest buddies in school. He scribbled his early, nebbish drawings on our apartment walls. There were wonderful people that I got to know and that I still have in my life. That was the most important thing to me at that time. When I graduated high school, I went to City College for a while and then I took some courses at Columbia. Then I realized that I didn’t want to go to college for more training. I had had wonderful training at Performing Arts and I’d had a lot of private classes, too. I decided I was just going to try and work in the theatre.
How did you get your first agent?
My mom had a wonderful agent, Barna Ostertag, who was a very famous agent at the time—wonderful agent. And I didn’t have an agent for a while because you could make the rounds in those days. Often my mom and I would make the rounds together. Go to a producer’s office, meet the person at the desk, and if there was something in production or casting soon I’d either get an interview or not. I remember touring some of the summer stock theatres with The Happiest Millionaire with Conrad Nagel. During that summer tour, my mother’s agent came out to see me and decided to work with me, which was very cool. It was just amazing to work with Barna Ostertag. She was a woman of great integrity.
In fact, in ’55, I think, I did winter stock in Erie, Pennsylvania; did my first Shakespeare as Rosalind in As You Like It. That was an interesting time. I was feeling my way as a professional in the business and becoming an independent adult, which is joyful and terrifying at the same time. I did another summer stock thing where I learned a major, major basic big lesson! We were doing one-week stock. That was really hard. We were doing My Three Angels and I was playing the young girl, the ingénue. I thought I knew my lines but I didn’t. I’ll never forget the horrific panic of standing off stage, gasping and sweating. Somehow, I remembered my first line and it was okay, but it was the lesson: “Do not ever, ever, EVER pretend that you know your lines when you don’t.”
What was your training like?
I had always had good training. I started out with some very good teachers, fortunately. Sid Lumet, actually, was one of my first teachers at Performing Arts. I don’t really like to say “Method” or “a method” or “somebody else’s method,” but my training over the years has certainly been working internally—developing a character from an internal source—and then incorporating all of the outside elements, the physical elements. But beginning with clear intentions and developing emotions and then finding out how this person walks and does her hair, that’s how I’ve always worked and how I’ve always taught all these years. Knowing the character’s history and understanding the relationship to the entire play; these are basics for me.
I studied modern dance with Lester Horton in California when I was little and then I went back in New York and studied with May O’Donnell and Gertrude Shurr who were both Martha Graham’s people. I always loved the dance world. There is something about the physicality of it that excites me, even though I knew I’d never be a dancer. I just loved it! I know that it very much helped with discipline I had as an actor. For the longest time, I didn’t know how to jump. I remember a class one time when Gertrude was teaching and she was putting us through our jumping paces and made the very clear picture of what it looked like when you jumped. She would say, “You jump and extend the rest of your body out from your shoulders and tighten your butt and legs and it’s UP like a V!” I remember the day I got that and I remember her yelling, “Yea! Jill is jumping!” It was sheer joy. That part of it, the discipline, the sense of order, and the sense of learning something that you can’t learn all at once—you have to do it step by step—that is the pleasurable part of acting for me. I feel integration is so important. It’s layers upon layers of creative activity that you keep discovering and opening up and then meshing and blending with the role that you’re working on.
What drew you to teaching?
It was a natural process. When I was in New York in the early ’70s, I was looking for a theatre company to join—a group of people that I had some kind of commonality with and whose work I liked. I started going to all of the small theatres to see performances. If I liked the feel of the place and the people, I would go back afterwards and say hello. I went to see this Japanese Noh production of Hamlet at the Terry Schreiber Studio. I was very taken with it. I introduced myself to Terry and we had a long talk. He said, “You’re just so right for the play I’m going to open my next season with.” It was a John Bishop play called The Trip Back Down. I read it and said, “Yes! This is me. This character is so potent for me. I want to do this.” We had the first read, opened successfully at Terry’s Studio Theatre, and then of course it went on to Broadway. It was very exciting. I got to do it on Broadway after originating the role. I had understudied before and I wanted the experience of creating a role from scratch.
I’d occasionally sit in on Terry’s classes just to see how he was doing it. Well, later that year, he had to go out of town to direct something and he asked me to take his class. I had often worked with actors as a coach and I had started directing at Hunter Playwrights. When Terry expanded the school, I kept teaching there until I moved to LA. Now, I mainly do private coaching. It’s very gratifying, teaching. Very.
Where did your dance training take you?
One winter I was just busting to get a theatre job. I was making the rounds and I must’ve left my picture with a talent manager. I was in my bathtub in the kitchen of my cold-water flat in Hell’s Kitchen. It was nearing Christmas. The phone rang and this gruff voice said, “Hello, Honey. Wanna go to the Dominican Republic?” I said, “Yeah! What do I have to do?” And I remembered one day having gone into an office to drop off my picture and hearing this gruff voice: “Hello!” I remembered that I was wearing my winter woolies and my hat and scarf, wrapped up to here and I hear, “How are your legs, Honey?” Of course, I had DANCER on my resume, so that’s what he was asking about. This was that guy calling, sending me out for this show—as a dancer!
This was a variety show going out for a World Trade Fair in the Dominican Republic and we were part of the entertainment. This show was produced by the son of one of the most famous burlesque producers, Harold Minsky. Fortunately, a girlfriend of mine was also hired as a dancer. This was 1955 and out of the country! This was when the Trujillos were in power in the Dominican Republic. There were acres and acres of this fair exhibit representing countries from all over the world in this huge, vast place. To be part of the entertainment was great! I learned a lot. I ended up being line captain at one point, which was a sheer fluke. There was so much I didn’t know! How could I be voted line captain? Well it was my own naïveté. The gal who was line captain split. She was scared and there were too many things going on in this country. There were some pretty tough cookies who were these strippers from New York. I didn’t know anything about that. I think my innocence actually saved me. It was a great trip! Somehow, we arrived safely back in New York a few months later. I decided it was a great way to see the world. I could get dancing jobs like that and travel! I really have gypsy in my blood. I love to go everywhere!
The next summer, I did stock in Wisconsin and our wonderful stage manager—a southern gal named Bimmie McGee—had been to Rome and she talked about it all summer! She said, “Y’know, I might be able to start a theatre there.” We all said, “Of course you could!” and, “When are we going?” The following January—this was in 1957—we sailed a big ocean liner to Italy. Bimmie got some family money, found a little theatre in Rome behind one of the big major opera houses, rented it, and we opened a season of two-week stock. We did Picnic, Solid Gold Cadillac, and a couple of other plays before we folded. Nobody knew we were there! There was no publicity. But, I stayed for a year in Europe—mostly in Rome, dubbing films and dancing in a revue that toured Sicily. We traveled to Greece, then to Paris—where I got another dancing gig—in the early live TV musical extravaganza days.
What do you wish someone had told you at the beginning of your career?
I think people give a lot of advice about how to study, who to study with, techniques and all that, which is all very important. But there’s something about developing yourself as a human being, really understanding who you are that is so basic to me. Having the freedom to be all of yourself is part of what I teach now. I wish someone had really taught me how to trust my instincts and value my imagination. It took me a long time to find that freedom. I still have to be patient with myself and stay fully in the present moment.
How do you prepare for a role?
A lot of different ways. Sometimes when I read the material, I know that I can connect to what’s inside that person’s emotional center; I sense their needs. Sometimes when I can’t connect, I just have to keep reading it, and reading it, and reading it and then some little aspect will reveal itself and will trigger a series of things. I might research that person’s history and background or I might have a visual concept of the person or I will see something another character has said about mine that makes sense to me. Sometimes it starts with a feel for a certain physical look: how they wear their hair, what kind of shoes or clothing that is real for this character.
What is your favorite thing about being an actor?
That’s changed. I think at this point in my life, it has to do with the community involved with the particular project, the people I choose to work with. That is so meaningful to me. On an internal level, I think it’s about finding a sense of ease with the work process. That makes me feel really good and comfortable and I know I’ve dropped into the right place.
Who is your favorite actor?
Judi Dench. She’s so forthright and she’s so committed. And she has a wacky sense of humor I see peeking out behind everything she does. And she is a sexy, mature woman!
What made you choose Los Angeles?
The first time we came out to LA as an adult, I was on the road tour with Sunrise at Campobello with Ralph Bellamy playing Roosevelt. I was playing Anna, the daughter. The tour ended here, so my husband Dick Franchot and I stayed here and had our first child, Gabrielle, in 1960 and our second child, Pascal, in 1962. After we separated in 1967, I went back to New York again. I put down roots for the next fifteen years, doing a lot of theatre, on and Off-Broadway, did many commercials—which helped put my kids through college—and started directing and teaching. After a two year run in Children of a Lesser God, it seemed time to head to California again. I’m so glad to be back. New York is great for going back to direct a play, visiting friends, going to the theatre—I love doing that. But this is home now. I have my dog and my big backyard and New York is just a JetBlue away! It’s the best of both worlds!
This interview was conducted on December 20, 2004, and it originally appeared in Acting Qs: Conversations with Working Actors by Bonnie Gillespie and Blake Robbins, available at Amazon.