Ulu Grosbard has worked as a unit production manager, assistant director, and director of both stage and screen, with credits ranging from the familial crime drama True Confessions (1981) to the romance drama Falling In Love (1984). After studying for one year at Yale University School of Drama and serving two years in the Army at the end of the Korean War, Grosbard began his career in New York focusing on becoming a theater director. Observing Sanford Meisner, Lee Strasberg and Uta Hagen, he honed his ability to draw powerful performances from actors. Grosbard made his transition from stage to screen with the cinematic adaptation of The Subject Was Roses (1968), a play that Grosbard had originally directed on Broadway four years earlier.
Directing a total of seven films between 1968 and 1999, Grosbard worked with Patricia Neal, Dustin Hoffman, Robert De Niro, Robert Duvall, Meryl Streep, Jennifer Jason Lee, and Michelle Pfeiffer. Gosbard’s crime drama True Confessions was nominated for the Golden Lion award at the 1981 Venice Film Festival, and his 1995 feature, Georgia, went on to win the Grand Prix of the Americas for Best Picture at the Montreal World Film Festival. His final film was the 1999 family drama The Deep End Of The Ocean, starring Michelle Pfeiffer, Treat Williams, and Whoopi Goldberg.
Ulu Grosbard served on the DGA’s Eastern Directors Council from 1983 to 1985; he also served as an alternate for the National Board from 2001 to 2003.