David Strathairn Joins Jessica Chastain in Broadway's THE HEIRESS this Fall

Academy Award® nominee and Emmy® Award winner David Strathairn (Dr. Austin Sloper) will join Academy Award® nominee Jessica Chastain (Catherine Sloper) in the Tony Award®-winning play The Heiress. Written by Ruth Goetz & Augustus Goetz, The Heiress will be directed by Tony Award® nominated playwright and director Moisés Kaufman and will open in the Fall of 2012 at a theatre to be announced.

Mr. Strathairn won the Volpi Cup at the Venice Film Festival and in 2006 earned nominations from the Academy, Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild, BAFTA and Independent Spirit Awards for his compelling portrait of legendary CBS news broadcaster Edward R. Murrow in George Clooney’s Oscar-nominated drama Good Night, and Good Luck. He won an Emmy in 2010 for Best Supporting Actor in the HBO project, Temple Grandin. Mr. Strathairn has maintained a high profile in the theatrical world with roles at such venues as the Manhattan Theatre Club, the New York Shakespeare Festival, Soho Rep, the Hartford Stage Company, Ensemble Studio Theatre and Seattle Repertory.

The Heiress will be produced by Paula Wagner, Roy Furman and Stephanie P. McClelland.

This production marks 17 years since the celebrated play was last seen on Broadway. The Heiress is based on the classic Henry James novel Washington Square and became an Academy Award-winning film.

Ms. Chastain was nominated for a 2012 Academy Award®, Golden Globe® Award and a Screen Actor’s Guild Award for her performance as “Celia Foote” in The Help. Her work in The Tree of Life (2011) and Take Shelter (2011) has garnered critical acclaim and multiple awards as Best Actress from the National Board of Review, New York Film Critics Circle, Los Angeles Film Critics Association and Chicago Film Critics Association.

Moisés Kaufman is a two-time Tony Award®-nominee as author of 33 Variations, which he also directed on Broadway starring Jane Fonda, and as director of the Broadway production of I Am My Own Wife for which he won an Obie Award and also received Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle and Lucille Lortel nominations. His play Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde earned him a Lortel and Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Off-Broadway play as well as a Joe A. Callaway Award for Best Director. And his film of his play The Laramie Project earned him two Emmy nominations (writing and directing) as well as a National Board of Review Award and a Humanitas Prize.

The original production of The Heiress, suggested by the Henry James novel Washington Square, premiered on Broadway in 1947 at the Biltmore Theatre. The 1949 Academy Award winning movie version was adapted from the play by the Goetzes, and was directed by William Wyler, starring Olivia de Havilland, Montgomery Clift and Ralph Richardson.

----

David Strathairn (Dr. Austin Sloper ) won the Volpi Cup at the Venice Film Festival and earned nominations from the Academy, Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild, BAFTA and Independent Spirit Awards for his compelling portrait of legendary CBS news broadcaster Edward R. Murrow in George Clooney’s Oscar-nominated drama Good Night, and Good Luck and won an Emmy for Best Supporting Actor in the HBO project, Temple Grandin. His 2005 Independent Spirit nomination was the fourth in a stellar career that dates back to his 1980 motion picture debut in John Sayles’s first film, The Return of the Secaucus Seven. Strathairn subsequently collaborated with Sayles on seven titles, winning the IFP honor for his supporting performance in City of Hope, while collecting two additional nominations for Passion Fish and “Limbo. His early screen efforts included supporting roles in Mike Nichols’ Silkwood, Fred Schepisi’s Iceman, James Foley’s At Close Range and Robert M. Young’s Dominick and Eugene, as well as Sayles’s acclaimed dramas Matewan and Eight Men Out, and his 1984 satire, The Brother from Another Planet. Strathairn continued a busy screen career with co-starring roles in several critically acclaimed films, including Tim Robbins’s directorial debut, Bob Roberts; Penny Marshall’s A League of Their Own; Losing Isaiah; Sydney Pollack’s The Firm; Sneakers; Taylor Hackford’s adaptation of the Stephen King novel Dolores Claiborne; and Jodie Foster’s Home for the Holidays; as well as two projects with Curtis Hansen: The River Wild and the Oscar-winning L.A. Confidential, in which Strathairn shared a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination with the all-star ensemble cast. His additional movie credits include Memphis Belle, A Map of the World, Simon Birch, Lost in Yonkers, Missing in America, Michael Hoffman’s adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Philip Kaufman’s Twisted, HBO's The Notorious Bettie Page, The Bourne Ultimatum directed by Paul Greengrass and The Tempest starring opposite Helen Mirren. He has also maintained a high profile in the theatrical world, with roles at such venues as the Manhattan Theatre Club, the New York Shakespeare Festival, Soho Rep, the Hartford Stage Company, Ensemble Studio Theatre and Seattle Repertory. David will next been seen in HBO's Hemingway and Gellhorn starring alongside Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman. Later this year he will appear opposite Daniel Day Lewis in Lincoln directed by Steven Spielberg.