John Frey

John Frey was an American actor, screenwriter, director, and acting teacher.

A New York native, Frey graduated from the prestigious William Esper Studio for actors and had a 25-year international career in film, theater and television. Frey's early theater acting and directing credits include Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, 27 Wagons Full of Cotton, Miss Julie, and Of Mice and Men.

Frey collaborated as an actor and/or screenwriter with Portuguese filmmaker Bruno de Almeida on such films as On the Run (1999), The Collection (2005), The Lovebirds (2009), The Lecture (2012), Operation Autumn (2013), and most recently, Cabaret Maxime (2018), which received numerous international film award nominations.

Frey's other film credits as an actor include The Hungry Ghosts, 15 Months in May, Call Girl in Slow Motion in Portugal, The Wake in Denmark, and Les Taxis Rouge in France. Frey's television acting credits include Days of Our Lives, Rescue Me (with Denis Leary), and the Russian miniseries Mata Hari.

In 2009, Frey moved to Lisbon, Portugal, where he opened the John Frey Studio for Actors, and later established the Below the Belt Theater Company, where he directed and staged plays including Stephen Adly Guirgis's The Motherfucker With the Hat, and John Patrick Shanley's Danny and the Deep Blue Sea.

Frey returned to New York City in 2019 to join the William Esper Studio faculty and taught there until his death. He had been working on a screenplay about Moby Dick author Herman Melville.

Frey died January 23, 2021, in New York City, New York. He was 62.