A highly respected acting coach whose influence on American stage and film acting can be seen in the work of his students--Geraldine Page, Liza Minnelli, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Matthew Broderick, Anne Bancroft and Fritz Weaver among others, Berghof also won acclaim as an actor on stage in "King Lear," "The Andersonville Trial" and "In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer" and in the films "Five Fingers" (1952) and "Cleopatra" (1963). He directed the American premiere of Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" in 1956.