Marian Hall Seldes (born August 23, 1928) is an American award-winning stage, film, radio, and television actress whose career has spanned six decades and who was elected to the American Theatre Hall of Fame.
Seldes was born in New York City, the daughter of Alice (née Hall) and Gilbert Seldes, a journalist, author, and editor. Her uncle was journalist George Seldes. Seldes's paternal grandparents were Russian Jewish immigrants, and her mother was from a "prominent WASP family", the "Episcopalian blue-blooded Halls". Seldes had a brother, Timothy, and grew up in a creative environment, studying acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse.
Trained for the stage, Seldes made her Broadway theatre debut in 1948 in a production of Medea. She went on to an illustrious career in which she has earned five Tony Award nominations, winning her first time out in 1967 for A Delicate Balance. From 1967 to 1991, Seldes was a faculty member of the Juilliard School of Drama, and in 2002 began teaching at Fordham University, Lincoln Center. In addition to performing in live theatre, Seldes began acting in television in 1952 in a Hallmark Hall of Fame production that marked the first of many guest star roles. She also has performed in a number of motion pictures and in radio plays. Between 1974 and 1982, she appeared in 179 episodes of the CBS Radio Mystery Theater.
Seldes was married to screenwriter/playwright Garson Kanin (Ruth Gordon's widower) from 1990 until his death in 1999. She has a daughter by her first marriage to Julian Claman. They were divorced in 1961.
She is very well respected and liked by the Broadway theater community. Actors boast about having had her for a teacher. In Xanadu, playing now, Jackie Hoffman will use Seldes' name for jokes at least once a week, usually to compare current Broadway and movie actresses to someone with real talent -- Seldes. Forbidden Broadway often refers to her the same way.
Seldes appeared in every one of the 1,809 Broadway performances of Ira Levin's play Deathtrap - a feat that earned her a mention in the Guinness Book of World Records as "most durable actress".
Awards
Nominations
