John Getz was born and raised in the Mississippi River Valley of Northern Illinois and Iowa. His mother, who'd abandoned aspirations toward an acting career to raise four children, and his father, who thought Cole Porter was right about most things, imparted their love for music and theater. Getz's intention was to write and teach but a long stretch of college, with a Shakespeare teacher who was passionate on the subject and a theatre teacher whose pleasure in his work was palpable, waylaid him. And after doing a number of plays at the University of Iowa he was encouraged to try the Profession.

He made his way to San Francisco, spent a summer in the training program and the subsequent season with the American Conservatory Theater, joined Actor's Equity, and a year later helped found the Napa Valley Theater Company in Yountville, Califonia. After a couple of successful seasons there he headed for New York.

A friend from Napa was directing a children's theater production in New York (with Murray Abraham and Bob Gunton) and gave him immediate employment. While doing that he found a job in a play at LaMaMa (with Danny DeVito and Peter Riegert). That led to a production of Macbeth with the New York Shakespeare festival at Lincoln Center and then the workshop and first production of the musical, The Robber Bridegroom. At the same time be found his first television work as a regular on the soap opera, Another World. All this in about nine months! "It was an exciting time in Manhattan", he told us..

For the next fourteen years, Getz lived and worked in New York, with occasional forays to LA for television and films. He worked on and off Broadway, in Central Park, in regional theaters and writing workshops, played the lead in a couple of television series, and in the movies The Fly and Blood Simple, among others.

In 1987 he married and moved to Los Angeles, with a long stretch back in New York to do M Butterfly on Broadway. In the years since he's been doing film and television in Los Angeles (and Nova Scotia and New Zealand and where there are jobs) and theater in LA and regional theatres, John says: "My passion and pleasure in the work have not dimished".

Representation:
Managment:
The Beddingfield Company
9255 Sunset Blvd., Suite. 920
Los Angeles, CA 90069
Tel: (310) 858-0033

Agency:
Innovative Artists
1505 10th St. Santa Monica, CA 90401
Tel: (310) 656-0400

John Getz's advice to the aspiring actor:

"The world is experience, language, and stories. Collect them all, however you can. There are many ways to create and to be useful. If you want to be an actor, so be it, almost any road can take you there, and everything is grist for the mill. But get up on a stage. Study, learn rehearse, enjoy it. My father once said after seeing me in an original musical in which I played a dozen characters, one of whom was a falsetto'd madam in a red dress, high heels, and a blond wig (I had a mustache at the time), Now I understand why you do this... you make people happy. "

For more info and credits see

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