Today we’d like to introduce you to Gary Imhoff.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I have been a professional actor for over 4 decades. I got my professional start at 19 when I went to open auditions for cast replacements in the first National Tour “Godspell” in Boston. I waited in line for 10 hours behind 450 people! Six callbacks later I signed my first production contract and was a professional actor, having just turned 20. After 10 months with the Boston cast, I was asked to join the New York production, moving into a different role and my career in NY began. While in New York I played “Godspell” for another 6 months and then played in a company of the Broadway show “Sherlock Holmes.” I also played Charlie Brown in the first New York-bound production of “Snoopy!” and many more, all the while appearing in MANY commercials.
Then I came to Los Angeles to try my hand in TV and film. Four days after I landed in LA I was cast in a leading role in a film called “Seniors” also starring two unknown actors named Priscilla Barnes (replaced Suzanne Somers in “Three’s Company”) and Dennis Quaid! I have guest starred in uncountable numbers of TV episodes, starred in five TV series pilots and appeared in many films including “The Green Mile” and “Maxwell Smart and the Nude Bomb” (the only film ever made from the original “Get Smart” TV series starring Don Adams) and played a recurring role on the TV series “Falcon Crest.”
In LA Theatre I had the pleasure of playing the role of Zangara in the West Coast premiere of Stephen Sondheim’s “Assassins” (our show is the longest run that show has ever had) and I played in the West Coast premiere of the long-running Off-Broadway hit, “I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change” and went on to play in the Off-Broadway production. I am most well-known as the voice of Prince Cornelius in the Don Bluth animated film “Thumbelina” and sang the Academy Award-nominated song “Let Me Be Your Wings” in the film. And I am also best known as the voice of Harry Osborn and The Green Goblin in the FOX/Marvel animated series “Spiderman.”
And my personal favorites are that I played “Fred Silverman” (programming head at NBC) as though he were a 16-year-old opposite Lucille Ball in an NBC special, “Lucy Moves To NBC” and Lucy and I became very close friends! She invited me to speak to her class at Cal State Northridge and invited me to her house to talk about the details of the class and I spent 7 hours with her that first day and we became very close friends. I visited her many times after that. She also had my mother and me over for Thanksgiving that year with Lucy and her husband and one family friend.
Afterwards, she and her husband showed us a show they were working on for CBS which was a 20 year retrospective of her career with clips of the best “I Love Lucy” episodes and she told us all the inside stories about each episode! When the day was over, my mother said as we left, “I can die now!” There are MANY stories connected with my travels with Lucy, if you are interested, including a night on the Johnny Carson show! The other sentimental favorite is I starred opposite Milton (“Mr. Television”) Berle in a TV Pilot directed by Jackie Cooper called “Moscow & Vine” where I played a Russian immigrant that Milton kind of takes in to help him with his old music store. So I had the complete pleasure of starring opposite the two original biggest stars in television!
However, there is another angle to this story which ends in the creation of my classes. In 1979 I wanted to really learn how to act and went to The Beverly Hills Playhouse and studied under Milton Katselas. Milton really taught me how to act and after teaching me how to be real, personal, emotionally connected, etc. in my acting work, he said, “OK, let’s see what this does to your singing.” And the change was remarkable. I had left Broadway because I got bored every night walking out on stage, flipping a “switch” and turning on my performance but not really participating in it personally. My work with Milton changed all that. When I sang now I was personally connected to every word, I was emotional, I was telling a story. And the reaction of audiences was astounding! No longer was I told, “You have such a beautiful voice.” Now audiences were saying, “Oh my, I was so moved!’
Milton had a friend who, after seeing Milton work with me, said, “You should teach this…” My response was, “No, I am an actor. I don’t want to teach.” But the friend persisted for TWO YEARS and I finally relented and said, “Well, I do have a passion for this way of working and I would like to help more people to have it.” So on February 14, 1987, I created The Musical Theatre Workshop at The Beverly Hills Playhouse (My 31 year teaching anniversary is next Tuesday!)
When I sat down in the teaching chair, two sides of myself (and two sides of my life) merged into one. I had ALWAYS loved helping people. For three years, starting when I was 15 years old, I was a counselor on a drug hotline in my hometown of Acton, Massachusetts! As drugs became less of a drastic situation, the hotline turned into a pregnancy, abortion, suicide, you-name-it hotline and I was helping people with all their problems! At Princeton University I was also a part of a program called S.E.C.H., Sexuality, Education, Counseling and Health. I LOVED and love to help people. And I also LOVE the arts. I have been an artist since I was born. At 3 years old, I would sing with my mother, a former USO singer, while she played her “play-by-number” organ and at 4 years old I produced a play on our doorstep for the neighbors! So art has been a part of my life since my first breath.
So when I sat in the teaching chair, it was I experienced a joy I had not ever had before. Not only was I helping people, but I was helping ARTISTS!!! A true dream-come-true! And I have taught non-stop ever since. So after creating The Musical Theatre Workshop at the Playhouse, I was asked to take over an Orientation (beginner) non-musical acting class. Then an Intermediate level class and finally I rose to become one of two teachers teaching Milton’s Advanced classes and we even taught his Master Class or six weeks when he was in the hospital! Most of my time at The Playhouse I was teaching five classes a week.
In 2007, after one month shy of twenty years teaching, I left the BHP to teach on my own. There were many reasons for this, mostly I wanted to shift not WHAT I taught, but the WAY it was being taught. I could talk for pages about my teaching philosophy but suffice it to say that I wanted to develop a way of teaching that did NOT rely on the teacher just giving answers but in fact, try to elicit the answers from the artists themselves. To work to empower them to learn how to find their own answers, so that they are not so reliant on people outside of themselves for their art. Similar to the old adage, “Feed a man a fish, you feed him for a day.
Teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.” And that is working beautifully. I have discovered that artists know a LOT more about their own art and what they want than they are ever given credit for. Most young actors think the director knows better, the teacher knows better, the Casting Director knows better, etc. But the truth is the ARTIST KNOWS! I also wanted to create a theatre that was the safest place an artist could be. A place where there was true freedom to explore risky ideas, be free to take chances and really not be afraid to fail because I believe you will not find your genius by making safe choices. You may very well find your genius by reaching into those places you fear, the areas in which you are reticent to travel.
I am extremely pleased with my approach since I left the BHP and I have seen actors grow and develop much faster with our new approach! Like the stories about Lucy and Milton Berle, there is much more I could talk about in terms of our approach now towards artists and teaching if you desire it. Our Musical classes are now called The Musical Artists Workshop and under that banner we have both our regular musical class and a Master Class and our regular acting classes are called The Professional Artists Workshop and under that banner, we have an orientation/beginner class called “The Basics of Acting” Workshop and also an Intermediate and Advanced level class.
There are lists of famous and soon to be famous actors I have taught, if you are interested and also as an addition, I have been primarily directing in the last 10 years and I have won 5 best director awards for productions I have directed in Los Angeles. I hope that is not too long and gives you an idea of my journey.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
The acting road was not a smooth road partially because I have always looked and felt younger than I am. I am also not tall and have a great deal of energy and vitality and this caused me to play teenagers on TV and film until I was 32 years old! It is highly unusual for an actor to be able to play 16 at 32 but I did it many times!
The difficulty came shortly thereafter because when you are getting a little too old to play a teenager, you don’t all of a sudden wake-up and find yourself a total adult! There is a long period as you grow into the ability to play adult roles and that long period can be a very long dry spell. It is this reason that I believe few child actors succeed in moving on to adult roles and success. The very thing that made them totally desirable for children and teen parts makes them a bit odd as adults!
So unlike most actors, I started in a hit, right out of the box and had great success from the start and THEN I had the challenge of having to turn to other means of making a living in the MIDDLE of my career rather than at the start!
I worked for a year and a half with a solar water-heating company putting solar water- heating units on homes all over the greater Los Angeles area while at night doing plays and anything else I could find in the arts. In fact, the company gave me a 3-month sabbatical in order to act in a play at the Ahmanson Theatre in downtown L.A. starring Alan Bates called “A Patriot For Me” by John Osborne.
Then I worked for the Playhouse in a couple jobs helping actors in the classes with problems in class and their life (almost counseling again!) and then teaching fell into my lap and though it helped as a solution to the problem I was facing in my career, it turns out, I believe, it is something I was not only meant to do but was PERFECTLY TAILORED FOR!!! And I found as many acting roles as I could in film TV and theatre along the way!
And though I have been directing for the last ten years, I am toying with the idea of stepping my toe back into the performing arena as I believe I have grown into a whole new realm of castable roles.
The Professional Artists Workshop and The Musical Artists Workshop – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
We approach every single actor/artist who comes into our classes as just that, an artist, albeit an artist under- or even un-developed but an artist nonetheless. And I have never heard ANY other teacher say the following. I believe that EVERY person who walks in our doors is loaded and ready to act! They just need to learn the craft of how to use what they already know (but do not know they know it!) Let me illustrate it as follows:
A lawyer came into my class once and said, “I have no acting experience.” I said, “Really? How old are you?” He said, “35.” I said, “I believe you have 35 years of acting experience.” To his startled and confused face, I said, “Let me ask you a question: Are you the same person with the boys at the bar as you are at your Mother-In-Law’s house?”
Of course, he said, “No!” And I said, “Exactly! Different situations, different requirements, different ways you act. Perhaps you act even two different CHARACTERS!!! Now, let’s set about learning the CRAFT of how to put all that knowledge and experience to work when it is NOT your lines, NOT your real Mother-In-Law or wife, etc…and learn how to do that when it is not really YOUR house, or there is a camera and you are in a studio, etc.”
Many teachers business model is to tell the actor and show them what they DON’T know and to invalidate them for their amateur acting and then tell them they are so lucky to have found this teacher who will “save them.” That business model appears to work well but the end result is to make the artist more reliant on someone outside of themselves.
Our business model is to ‘teach ourselves out of business with each actor we work with,” to help them become SO capable that if necessary they can guide themselves and not need to rely on anyone else to be great and can guide themselves to greater and greater artistic success.
I am all for the creative contribution that can be made by a great director, writer, casting director, etc. but as actors will find in our business, many directors were lighting people before or writers, etc. and don’t really know how to work with actors or how to make them better. So it is our goal to help artists know how to make THEMSELVES better so they are prepared for the many situations where effective help is not available.
Also, another thing that separates us is that we invite the artists in our classes to bring in their own creations. To use the classes as a place to experiment and explore all of their arts. We have had actors create two characters in class, which later developed into a potential web series that, instead, was sold as a pilot to a major cable company and those two actors are now working on a whole new plain in the business and they are in demand.
We had one actor who was 40 years old and never had an acting agent, who created his own work through the workshop and landed the starring role in a pilot (without an agent) and then landed a BIG agent and has been on three on-air series and cannot stop working. There are MANY stories like this because we encourage students to create their own art also within the classes!
Finally, though we have yet to have anyone study with us who has become as famous as Brad Pitt or Haley Berry I believe we will and soon. The list of people I have taught is very impressive. The final point I would make is that we teach the individual in front of us. We do not teach from one-size fits all approach. I have even invented a few exercises in order to tackle very specific issues. And I believe that I am one of the best around at pinpointing exactly what each artist needs to do to achieve the next step in their development.
What is “success” or “successful” for you?
As must be clear from what I have already written, I believe success is helping people to be better people, artists to be better artists and hopefully through their good works and through their art to help others do the same and thereby improve conditions in society and the world.
I have performed for a very few people in little theatre thousands on and off Broadway and for millions on TV and film. If I have entertained people I am happy if I have moved them I am happy if I have somehow brought them to a new awareness, a new understanding which will improve their lives and the lives of those around them, I am ecstatic!
I had an experience which I consider one of my greatest successes: I was playing the lead in a musical called “All That He Was” (available on iTunes!) in a small theatre in Hollywood. I was playing a gay man who had died of Aids and as a spirit had returned to the day of his funeral to try to help reunite his family (his father was homophobic) and his ex-girlfriend, boyfriend, etc. It was a very moving experience for all who saw the show.
One night this man come backstage in tears and with a strong Texas, accent says, “You have changed my life…I am a Christian minister and I have preached from the pulpit against my brother. My brother is a homosexual and I have preached against him. You have taught me tonight that I must go home and EMBRACE my brother!”
I went home and though the same thing my mother had said after Thanksgiving with Lucille Ball. “I can die now!” The changing of that one life, the bringing of that man to a new level of understanding of his life and his brother and moving someone from a position of judgmental prejudice to embrace and understanding, I believe is the greatest achievement I could hope for!
And as in that example, all artists have the power through art to change the world and I hope to inspire them to do that in their work as well as continue to do it in my own. I would just like to continue to do it on an even bigger and wider playing field!
Pricing:
- The Musical Artists Workshop is $160 every 4 weeks (ongoing class)
- The Professional Artists Workshop/Basics of Acting Class (Beginning/Orientation) is $190 every 4 weeks (ongoing class)
- The Intermediate Class is $200 every 4 weeks (ongoing class)
- The Advanced Class is $240 every 4 weeks (ongoing class)
- If anyone mentions this article we will offer them $50 off their first 4 weeks!
Contact Info:
- Address: 11006 Magnolia Blvd. North Hollywood, CA 91601 (Classes at The Whitmore-Lindley Theatre)
2566 Santa Anita Avenue Altadena, CA 91001-2236 (Mailing address) - Website: www.garyimhoff.net
- Phone: 626-808-0210
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/garyimhoffartistsworkshops/
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/gary.imhoff.58
- Twitter: twitter.com/imhoffworkshops
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