Kevin McCarthy

Was a strong proponent of the "Method" school of acting and a founding member of The Actors Studio, which was initially formed and taught by Elia Kazan. The first class, run by Robert Lewis, consisted of Kevin, Maureen Stapleton, Montgomery Clift, Tom Ewell, John Forsythe, Eli Wallach, Anne Jackson, Patricia Neal, Karl Malden, David Wayne, E.G. Marshall and Jerome Robbins.
His famous sister was author Mary McCarthy who wrote the best-seller "The Group". Many of her works were influenced by the trauma of her and her siblings' tragic, difficult and often abusive childhood.
Cousin of former U.S. Senator and presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy.
The movie version of Morte di un commesso viaggiatore (1951) was not a box office success but earned several Academy Award nominations, including ones for support actor Kevin and lead actor Fredric March.
He performed his one-man show "Give Em Hell, Harry" (as Harry S. Truman), for over 20 years and played the role in every state but Alaska and South Dakota. In addition, he won an Obie award for playing President Truman in another play, "Harry Outside" (1975).

I like acting in the theater more than anywhere else because you get a little more depth and breadth in most stage stories . . . but I enjoy it all.
about his experiences at The Actors Studio] Lee Strasberg could be very caustic and he was fairly nasty to me on several occasions.
In London I played Biff [on stage] with a great deal of anguish and determination and desperation to the point where the part became very personal to me . . . With the exception of Fredric March, the principal actors of the movie had already played their parts in the play in one place or another. So during rehearsals, when [Frederic March] would be telling jokes right up until the director yelled, "Action!", I found myself resenting the way he worked. Not that he wasn't a nice guy . . . It's just that he had never done the investing of his intelligence and feeling in a study of what Willy [Loman] was about. In fact, Arthur Miller thought March played Loman as if he was simply nuts, and never favored what he did in the film at all.