Biagio Anthony Gazzarra (August 28, 1930 – February 3, 2012), known as Ben Gazzara, was an American film, stage, and television actor and director. He won an Emmy Award for his role in Hysterical Blindness .

Biography

Gazzara married three times; to actress Louise Erickson (1951–57), actress Janice Rule (1961–1979), and German model Elke Krivat from 1982. Following his separation from his first wife, Gazzara was engaged to stage actress Elaine Stritch and later disclosed a love affair with actress Audrey Hepburn. He and Hepburn co-starred in two of her final films, Bloodline (1979) and They All Laughed (1981).

During filming of the war movie The Bridge at Remagen (1969) co-starring Gazzara and his friend Robert Vaughn, the Warsaw Pact invaded Czechoslovakia. Filming was halted temporarily, and the cast and crew were detained before filming was completed in West Germany. During their departure from Czechoslovakia, Gazzara and Vaughn assisted with the escape of a Czech waitress whom they had befriended. They smuggled her to Austria in a car waved through a border crossing that had not yet been taken over by the Soviet army in its crackdown on the Prague Spring.