Clifford Stevens, an influential agent on Broadway and a founding partner at Paradigm, died over the weekend in New York City, the talent agency announced. He was 82.
Stevens shepherded the careers of such actors as Colleen Dewhurst, James Earl Jones, Lauren Bacall, Andy Garcia, Ralph Fiennes, Jason Robards, Kenneth Branagh, Campbell Scott, Michael Gambon, Glenn Close, George Hearn, Len Cariou, Brian Bedford and George Grizzard and designers like Santo Loquasto and Desmond Heeley.
“Clifford will always be known as one of the great gentleman agents,” Paradigm chairman and CEO Sam Gores said in a statement. “He brought insight, humor, wit and great intelligence to everything he touched.”
Stevens began as an agent in 1963 with Peter Witt and went on to launch Smith-Stevens and then STE Representations in 1977. His firm and a couple others were merged under Gores in 1992 to create Paradigm.
A photo of Stevens hangs just past the bar at the Broadway hangout Joe Allen’s, one of his favorite haunts.
