Today's Featured Site: Cliff Osmond

Today's featured site is that of my acting teacher and coach Cliff Osmond.

I began my professional acting while studying with Cliff in San Antonio, Texas in the late eighties and have since worked on stage, in commercials, dinner theater, industrial films, voice overs and as a photographer's model in many newspaper and magazine advertisements. I mention these small achievements only to underscore the promise made at the time: "At the completion of the course, the actor will be prepared to ply his/her craft in any market in the country."

Cliff Osmond is a veteran actor, director, writer, and teacher based in Los Angeles. He is a long time member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the Oscars), the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (the Emmys), the Screen Actor's Guild, AFTRA, and the WGA.

Cliff has appeared in dozens of films and hundreds of episodic television shows and movies of the week. Most notably, Cliff appeared in four Billy Wilder films including starring roles in "Kiss Me Stupid" with Dean Martin and Kim Novak and "The Fortune Cookie" with Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. Lemmon and Matthau were Cliff's sponsors into the Motion Picture Academy. He also wrote and directed "The Penitent" starring Armand Assante and Raul Julia.

Cliff teaches acting and scene study in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Dallas. For more information, please visit Cliff's website or feel free to email him at cliff@cliffosmond.com

That is from his bio at his website. What it doesn't tell you is that Cliff is an admirable and decent man.

He once described himself to me as being a "scourge of persistence", which resonated with me as I was myself engaged in the process of self-rediscovery and reinvention after several years of being severely misused and dehumanized while in corporate management. He has had to reinvent himself many times in an industry which is unrelenting in its insatiable hunger for new, for different, and for young. For decades; from actor, to writer/director, to teacher/coach, to on set coach, Cliff has brought a unique focus and talent affecting and making better at their craft countless actors and directors.

I'll not go into all that I owe Cliff, or the things I've learned from him (both about acting and life--which are actually inseparable) but, I will say that he has affected my human development nearly as profoundly as my experiences as a Marine. In some ways he reminds me of my father--each with an ability to uncomplicate and see clearly the vital essence of things that most of us encumber with obfuscating layers of uncertainty, self-doubt, and caution.

I think you'll enjoy his blogs: Cliff Osmond Unedited and Cliff Osmond on Acting. Take a few minutes and drop in.