GEORGE CLOONEY'S ACTING COACH DIES

    Milton Katselas, a leading acting coach who counted George Clooney, Michelle Pfeiffer, Kim Cattrall, Patrick Swayze and Alec Baldwin among his pupils has died, aged 75.
    Katselas, who founded the Beverly Hills Playhouse acting school 30 years ago, died of heart failure at Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre in Los Angeles.
    He was a successful theatre, television and film director as well as a teacher, nominated for a Tony award for his 1970 Broadway production of Butterflies Are Free, which he went on to direct as a film starring Goldie Hawn in 1972.
    Emmy-winning Everybody Loves Raymond star Doris Roberts, 78, a student for decades, said: “I a the actress I am because of him. I am the human being I am because of him. He was an original, extraordinary.”
    In an interview last year Pfeiffer said he taught actors to “second-guess your first superficial choice” and “prepares actors so you are a little director proof, because you learn to be your own director.”
    Born in Pittsburgh to Greek parents, he studied at the famed Actors Studio in New York before working for Elia Kazan and other theatre directors.
    Katselas moved to Hollywood when he made Butterflies Are Free and returned East in 1983 to direct Private Lives with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.
    He left the show before it reached Broadway and said later he did not get along with Taylor.
    His other students included Gene Hackman, Kate Hudson, Chris Noth, Anne Archer, Tyne Daly, Jenna Elfman, Robert Urich, Tom Selleck and Tony Danza.