Jerry Zaks (born September 7, 1946) is a multiple Tony Award-winning American Broadway theatre and television director and actor.
Born in Stuttgart, Germany, the son of Holocaust survivors, Zaks graduated from Dartmouth College and received a Master of Fine Arts from Smith College. He made his Broadway acting debut in the original production of Grease and also appeared in Tintypes. He made his directing debut in 1981 with the off-Broadway production of Christopher Durang's Beyond Therapy.
Zaks served as Resident Director at Lincoln Center from 1986 -1990 and is a founding member of the Ensemble Studio Theatre. In addition to his Tony and Drama Desk Awards, he has won two Outer Critics Circle Awards, an Obie, and an NAACP Image Award nomination for his national tour of The Tap Dance Kid. He received the George Abbott Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theater in 1994 and an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from Dartmouth in 1999.
As an actor, Zaks' screen credits include Outrageous Fortune, Crimes and Misdemeanors, and Husbands and Wives. On television he has appeared in M*A*S*H and The Edge of Night and directed episodes of Everybody Loves Raymond, Frasier, Hope and Faith, and Two and a Half Men, among others. He also directed the feature film Marvin's Room.
