Robert Francis LuPone (July 29, 1946 – August 27, 2022) was an American actor and artistic director. He worked on stage, in film, and in television. He was the brother of actress
Patti LuPone
Patti Ann LuPone (born April 21, 1949) is an American actress and singer. After starting her professional career with The Acting Company in 1972, she soon gained acclaim for her leading performances on the Broadway and West End stage. Known f ...
.
Early life and training
LuPone was born in
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is a Boroughs of New York City, borough of New York City located at the westernmost end of Long Island in the New York (state), State of New York. Formerly an independent city, the borough is coextensive with Kings County, one of twelv ...
on July 29, 1946.
His father, Orlando Joseph LuPone, worked as a school administrator and English teacher at
Walt Whitman High School in
Huntington, Long Island; his mother, Angela Louise (Patti), was a library administrator at the
C.W. Post Campus of
Long Island University
Long Island University (LIU) is a private university in Brooklyn and Brookville, New York, United States. The university enrolls over 16,000 students and offers over 500 academic programs at its main campuses, LIU Brooklyn and LIU Post on Long I ...
. His great-great aunt was 19th-century Spanish-born Italian opera singer
Adelina Patti
Adelina Patti (19 February 184327 September 1919) was a Spanish-Italian opera singer. At the height of her career, she was earning huge fees performing in the music capitals of Europe and America. She first sang in public as a child in 1851, a ...
. His father's side came from
Abruzzo
Abruzzo (, ; ; , ''Abbrìzze'' or ''Abbrèzze'' ; ), historically also known as Abruzzi, is a Regions of Italy, region of Southern Italy with an area of 10,763 square km (4,156 sq mi) and a population of 1.3 million. It is divided into four ...
, while his mother's side is
Sicilian.
LuPone was raised in
Northport, New York
Northport is a Administrative divisions of New York#Village, village in the Huntington, New York, Town of Huntington in Suffolk County, New York, Suffolk County, on the North Shore (Long Island), North Shore of Long Island, New York (state), New ...
on
Long Island
Long Island is a densely populated continental island in southeastern New York (state), New York state, extending into the Atlantic Ocean. It constitutes a significant share of the New York metropolitan area in both population and land are ...
.
He trained as a dancer and was a graduate of
Juilliard School
The Juilliard School ( ) is a Private university, private performing arts music school, conservatory in New York City. Founded by Frank Damrosch as the Institute of Musical Art in 1905, the school later added dance and drama programs and became ...
, having studied with
Antony Tudor,
Jose Limon, and
Martha Graham
Martha Graham (May 11, 1894 – April 1, 1991) was an American modern dancer, teacher and choreographer, whose style, the Graham technique, reshaped the dance world and is still taught in academies worldwide.
Graham danced and taught for over s ...
.
He also studied theatre at
HB Studio
The HB Studio (Herbert Berghof Studio) is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization offering professional training in the performing arts through classes, workshops, free lectures, theater productions, theater rentals, a theater artist residency prog ...
under
Uta Hagen
Uta Thyra Hagen (12 June 1919 – 14 January 2004) was a German-American actress and theatre practitioner. She originated the role of Martha in the 1962 Broadway premiere of '' Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?'' by Edward Albee, who called her "a ...
.
Career
After graduating from Juilliard in 1968, LuPone made his
Broadway debut that same year as a dancer in "Noël Coward's Sweet Potato". He featured in three more shows in that same capacity before successfully auditioning for ''
A Chorus Line
''A Chorus Line'' is a 1975 musical conceived by Michael Bennett with music by Marvin Hamlisch, lyrics by Edward Kleban, and a book by James Kirkwood Jr. and Nicholas Dante.
Set on the bare stage of a Broadway theater, the musical is cent ...
'' (1976), having convinced
Michael Bennett to let him play the role of the director, Zach. LuPone was nominated for the
Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical
The Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical is an honor presented at the Tony Awards, a ceremony established in 1947 as the Antoinette Perry Awards for Excellence in Theatre, to actors for quality featured roles in a musi ...
, in what proved to be his final dancing role.
His later performances included ''
A Thousand Clowns'' (2001), ''
True West'' (2000), ''
A View from the Bridge
''A View from the Bridge'' is a play by American playwright Arthur Miller. It was first staged on September 29, 1955, as a one-act verse drama with '' A Memory of Two Mondays'' at the Coronet Theatre on Broadway. The run was unsuccessful, ...
'' (1997), ''
Late Nite Comic'' (1987), ''
Saint Joan'' (1977), and ''
The Magic Show'' (1974).
His numerous
off-Broadway
An off-Broadway theatre is any professional theatre venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, inclusive. These theatres are smaller than Broadway theatres, but larger than off-off-Broadway theatres, which seat fewer tha ...
performances included ''Twelfth Night'' (1980), ''Black Angel'' (1982), and ''Lennon'' (1982). He also appeared in regional theater.
He was the director of the MFA Drama Program at
The New School
The New School is a Private university, private research university in New York City. It was founded in 1919 as The New School for Social Research with an original mission dedicated to academic freedom and intellectual inquiry and a home for p ...
for Drama (New York City) until the spring of 2011.
Together with his former student, Bernie Telsey, LuPone established the Manhattan Class Company in 1986. This eventually became the
MCC Theater. As its artistic director,
he produced ''
Frozen'' (2004), ''
Reasons To Be Pretty'' (2008), and "
Hand to God" (2014), all of which were nominated for the
Tony Award for Best Play
The Tony Award for Best Play (formally, an Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre) is an annual award given to the best new (non-musical) play on Broadway, as determined by Tony Award voters. There was no award in the Tonys' first year ...
and eventually made their way to Broadway.
On television, LuPone appeared in five episodes of ''
The Sopranos
''The Sopranos'' is an American Crime film#Crime drama, crime drama television series created by David Chase. The series follows Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini), a New Jersey American Mafia, Mafia boss who suffers from panic attacks. He reluct ...
'' as Dr. Bruce Cusamano, next-door neighbor of the titular Soprano family (1999–2007). He appeared on ''
Law & Order: Criminal Intent'' for two episodes as Nelson Broome (2003–2009), and on ''
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit'' for one episode in 2004. He also appeared on ''
All My Children
''All My Children'' (often shortened to ''AMC'') is an American television soap opera that aired on American Broadcasting Company, ABC from January 5, 1970, to September 23, 2011, and on The Online Network (TOLN) from April 29 to September 2, 2 ...
'' in the 1980s and ''
Guiding Light
''Guiding Light'' (known as ''The Guiding Light'' before 1975) is an American radio and television soap opera. ''Guiding Light'' aired on CBS for 57 years between June 30, 1952, and September 18, 2009, overlapping a 19-year broadcast on radio ...
'' in the 1990s.
He appeared in the pilot episode of the
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast. It is one of NBCUniversal's ...
musical
Musical is the adjective of music.
Musical may also refer to:
* Musical theatre, a performance art that combines songs, spoken dialogue, acting and dance
* Musical film
Musical film is a film genre in which songs by the Character (arts), charac ...
series ''
Smash'' as well as the pilot episode of
Showtime's drama ''
Billions''.
Personal life
At the time of his death, LuPone was a resident of
Athens, New York.
He was married to Virginia Robinson until his death. Together, they had one son. His younger sister is actress-singer
Patti LuPone
Patti Ann LuPone (born April 21, 1949) is an American actress and singer. After starting her professional career with The Acting Company in 1972, she soon gained acclaim for her leading performances on the Broadway and West End stage. Known f ...
.
LuPone died on August 27, 2022, at a hospice facility in
Albany, New York
Albany ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. It is located on the west bank of the Hudson River, about south of its confluence with the Mohawk River. Albany is the oldes ...
. He was 76 with
pancreatic cancer
Pancreatic cancer arises when cell (biology), cells in the pancreas, a glandular organ behind the stomach, begin to multiply out of control and form a Neoplasm, mass. These cancerous cells have the malignant, ability to invade other parts of ...
.
Filmography
Film
Television
References
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:LuPone, Robert
1946 births
2022 deaths
20th-century American male actors
21st-century American male actors
Alumni of the Drama Studio London
American male film actors
American male musical theatre actors
American male television actors
American people of Italian descent
American theatre managers and producers
Deaths from pancreatic cancer in New York (state)
Juilliard School alumni
Male actors from Brooklyn
People from Greene County, New York
People from Northport, New York
The New School faculty