After attending Williams College and then the Yale School of Drama , he acted professionally for eight years, later joining the Group Theatre in , and co-founded the Actors Studio in Kazan acted in a few films, including City for Conquest His films were concerned with personal or social issues of special concern to him. Kazan writes, "I don't move unless I have some empathy with the basic theme. It received eight Oscar nominations and three wins, including Kazan's first for Best Director.
It was followed by Pinky , one of the first films in mainstream Hollywood to address racial prejudice against African Americans. A Streetcar Named Desire , an adaptation of the stage play which he had also directed, received twelve Oscar nominations, winning four, and was Marlon Brando 's breakthrough role. Three years later, he directed Brando again in On the Waterfront , a film about union corruption on the New York harbor waterfront. It also received twelve Oscar nominations, winning eight.
His decision to cooperate and name names brought him strong negative reactions from many friends and associates. His harshly anti-communist testimony "damaged if not shattered the careers of his former colleagues, Morris Carnovsky and Art Smith , both actors, and the playwright Clifford Odets ". When Kazan was awarded an honorary Oscar in , dozens of actors chose not to applaud as demonstrators picketed the event.
Kazan influenced the films of the s and s with his provocative, issue-driven subjects. Director Stanley Kubrick called him "without question, the best director we have in America, [and] capable of performing miracles with the actors he uses". His maternal grandfather was Isaak Shishmanoglou. Elia's brother, Avraam, was born in Berlin and later became a psychiatrist. Kazan was raised in the Greek Orthodox Church and attended Greek Orthodox services every Sunday, where he had to stand for several hours with his father.
His mother read the Bible but did not go to church. When Kazan was about eight years old, the family moved to New Rochelle, New York , and his father sent him to a Roman Catholic catechism school because there was no Orthodox church nearby. As a young boy, he was remembered as being shy, and his college classmates characterized him as more of a loner.
