Stage & Screen

When Rick Lenz found himself in the bright lights of New York and Hollywood, the industry and public soon saw in him a chameleon of characters on stage, in one-man shows, and alongside many of Hollywood’s biggest film stars – Goldie Hawn, Walter Matthau, Ingrid Bergman, Peter Sellers, Elizabeth Taylor, John Wayne, Maureen O’Hara, Jackie Gleason, Lauren Bacall, Alan Alda, Blythe Danner, Paul Sorvino and many more. His role-playing parlayed over to the pen and spawned a successful string of plays, beginning with his Off-Broadway 70s production, “Swung” to “Clean as a Whistle” to “The Epic of Buster Friend”, which debuted at the American Shakespeare Theatre and then swashbuckled on over to PBS. “So Long, Mr. Broadway” was published by Dramatists Play Service and West Coast Plays, and he won Los Angeles Dramalogue Awards for playwriting both “Familiar Places” and “Last Class.”

In 2002, Sharon Gless and the late John Ritter performed Lenz’s “Felony Audition” at the Playwright’s Kitchen Ensemble. From satire to romance to comedy to mystery, Lenz has acted, directed, or scripted it all and with half of Hollywood’s Walk of Fame. If you think you’ve seen Rick Lenz with a colorful sweater draped around his shoulders out and about in Hollywood, you probably have.