System Mechanic - Clean, repair, protect, and speed up your PC!Byrne Piven
d. 2002
CHICAGO (Wed February 20, 2002) - Byrne Piven, an actor, director and teacher who influenced generations of performers, including his son, TV and movie actor Jeremy Piven, has died. He was 72.
Piven died Monday of lung cancer in St. Francis Hospital of Evanston.
During its 30 years, the Piven Theatre Workshop in Evanston, a Chicago suburb, has shaped the work of stage and film actors including John, Joan and Ann Cusack; Lili Taylor; Aidan Quinn; and the Pivens' two children, Shira and Jeremy.
Jeremy Piven appeared in the TV series "Ellen" and later starred in another ABC series, "Cupid." His father guest-starred on one episode of "Cupid" in 1998, playing a psychiatrist. The younger Piven also has appeared in a number of films, including "Grosse Pointe Blank," "Just Write" and "Black Hawk Down."
Piven's widow, Joyce Piven, said her husband had been playing in "King Lear" at their theater in Evanston last summer in a production directed by their daughter. But then he was diagnosed with lung cancer in November, she said.
After hearing Piven was ill, several former students flew to Chicago to be with him, including the Cusacks and Quinn.
"He had such a big heart that he sort of willed himself into consciousness while we were all there," John Cusack said. "We needed to tell him how much he had meant to us."
Born in Scranton, Pa., Piven first went to work as an actor in New York, but moved to Chicago in 1954.
He and his wife were married that year. They left Chicago the following year to work and study in New York, then returned to Chicago in 1967 and appeared in the short-lived Second City Repertory company. The couple later set up their acting workshop in Evanston.
``I came to Chicago to escape the show-biz scene in New York and to become a real legitimate actor,' Piven once said.
