Actor-Director Nesbitt Blaisdell Has Passed Away

Today the Blaisdell family announced the death of lifelong actor Nesbitt Blaisdell. Nesbitt was born in New York City, December 6, 1928. He was raised in Washington, D.C. and attended the Westminster School of Simsbury, CT. He graduated from Amherst College with a BA in 1951 and served in the United States Marine Corps during the Korean War. He graduated from Columbia University in 1958 with an MFA in Directing.

He began his professional acting career in 1957, performing with the Anna Sokolow Dance Troupe at the Theatre de Lys (Lucille Lortel Theatre). He studied the Stanislavski Method at the Paul Mann Actor's Workshop for three years.

He taught theater for 15 years at such diverse institutions as Culver-Stockton College in Canton, Missouri, the University of Iowa, St. Leo College in Florida, and the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay.

Mr. Blaisdell returned to professional acting in 1975 when he earned his Equity card playing Dogberry in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing at the Court Theatre in Chicago. He moved back to New York and joined the Colonnades Theatre Lab in 1977 and was a company member for six seasons. There he performed in major productions including Moliere in Spite of Himself as the One-eyed Musketeer/Count d'Orssini, and in Guests of the Nation as Sergeant Belcher, a production that was reprised by PBS Television's Masterpiece Theatre in 1991.

Other Off-Broadway credits include productions at Theatre for the New City, The Public Theatre, the Irish Repertory Theatre, the Ensemble Studio Theatre and the Jewish Repertory Theatre. His Broadway credits include the role of Reverend Tooker in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof with Kathleen Turner at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre in 1990, and the role of Ben Mattling in Abe Lincoln in Illinois with Sam Waterston at Lincoln Center in 1993.

In regional theater he had appeared at the Goodman Theater and the St. Nicholas Theatre Company in Chicago, at the Indiana Repertory in The Boys in Autumn, in Cleveland at Great Lakes Shakespeare in A Child's Christmas in Wales, at Cincinnati's Playhouse in the Park in The Immigrant and Valley Song, at the Dallas Theater Center in Ah! Wilderness, at ACT in Seattle, in Custer and Getting Out, at the Pioneer Theater in Salt Lake City with Murder of Edwin Drood, at the Milwaukee Rep in Romeo and Juliet, at the Merrimack Rep in Lowell, Massachusetts in Trying, and at Boston's Huntington Theater in To Kill a Mockingbird, at Anchorage's Alaska Rep with Enemy of the People and Major Barbara. In addition, he performed in Waiting for Godot at Norfolk Stage, and The Weir at The Old Globe in San Diego.

Mr. Blaisdell appeared abroad in Hong Kong, in Dublin, Ireland, and three times in Canada, including the role of Big Daddy in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof at Centre Stage in Toronto, and in Fool for Love at Citadel Theatre, Edmonton. He was member of four repertory companies: New Jersey Shakespeare, Stratford Festival in Connecticut, Colonnades Theater Lab, and in the Hope College Summer Theater in Holland, Michigan.

His television credits include the roles of Lyndon Johnson in the NBC-aired mini-series Kennedy in 1983, Mr. Phagan in The Murder of Mary Phagan in 1988, also on NBC, and Sgt. Belcher in Guests of the Nation for PBS television's Masterpiece Theatre in 1991. He also appeared in episodes of Law and Order, Oz, The Confession, Empire Falls, and Damages.

Mr. Blaisdell's big-screen credits include roles in Ragtime, Eddie Macon's Run with Kirk Douglas, Funny Farm with Chevy Chase, Reckless, Palookaville, Addicted to Love with Matthew Broderick, Dead Man Walking with Susan Sarandon, Frequency with Dennis Quaid, The Mothman Prophecies with Richard Gere, and Mambo Cafe. With the Rufus Film Company of Williamsburg, Brooklyn his credits include 89 Seconds at the Alcazar, Rape of the Sabine Women, and No Food, No Money, No Jewels all directed by Eve Sussman.

Nesbitt retired to North Laurel, Maryland, spending his final 20 years restoring and preserving Wellhouse, the family farmhouse and tree farm, making daily walks in the Harding Rd. woods he so loved.

Nesbitt is survived by his sister, his niece and two nephews, his three sons from his first marriage, a daughter from his second marriage, his second wife and his four grandchildren.

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