Torn, Rip [né Elmore Rual Torn] (b. 1931), actor and director. The intense, unpredictable actor has always managed to find bold and unusual parts and has also directed experimental theatre projects. He was born in Temple, Texas, and educated at Texas A. and M. College and the University of Texas before working as an oil field roustabout and architectural draftsman. Torn eventually went to New York, where he studied acting with Sanford Meisner and Lee Strasberg, and made an auspicious Broadway debut in 1956, as a replacement for Brick in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. He shone in another Tennessee Williams role, the dangerous young Tom in Sweet Bird of Youth (1959), eventually taking over the lead role of drifter Chance Wayne. Among his other memorable stage performances were the farmer Eben Cabot in love with his young stepmother in Desire under the Elms (1963), the small‐town bigot Lyle Briten in Blues for Mister Charlie (1964), a gritty Tom in The Glass Menagerie (1975), the Howard Hughes–like recluse Henry Hackamore in Seduced (1979), and the failing businessman Will Kidder in The Young Man from Atlanta (1995). He sometimes performed with his actress‐wife, Geraldine Page.

The Oxford Companion to American Theatre. Copyright © 2004 by Oxford University Press, Inc. All rights reserved.