Jason Miller

Jason Miller, born John Anthony Miller Jr. on April 22, 1939, in Queens, New York City, was an American playwright and actor whose work spanned Broadway, film, and regional theatre. His parents were Mary Claire Miller, a teacher, and John Anthony Miller Sr., an electrician, and his background was primarily Irish Catholic with some German ancestry. The family relocated to Scranton, Pennsylvania, in 1941, where Miller attended St. Patrick's High School before enrolling at the Jesuit-run University of Scranton, earning a degree in English and philosophy. He subsequently pursued graduate study in speech and drama at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., during which time he taught drama and English at Archbishop Carroll High School.

Miller came to national prominence in 1972 with That Championship Season, a play set in Scranton whose original Broadway cast included Charles Durning, Richard Dysart, and Paul Sorvino. The production earned him the Drama Desk Award for Most Promising Playwright in 1972, followed by the Tony Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, both in 1973. That same year, director William Friedkin cast Miller as the troubled priest Father Damien Karras in the horror film The Exorcist, a performance that earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. He was subsequently offered the lead role in Taxi Driver but declined in favor of Robert Mulligan's The Nickel Ride. He reprised the role of Father Karras in The Exorcist III in 1990.

In 1982, Miller directed the film adaptation of That Championship Season, assembling a cast that included Paul Sorvino, Martin Sheen, Stacy Keach, Bruce Dern, and Robert Mitchum, who replaced William Holden after Holden died before filming began. Miller's other film appearances included The Devil's Advocate in 1977, The Dain Curse in 1978, The Ninth Configuration in 1980, Toy Soldiers in 1984, and Rudy in 1993, in which he portrayed Notre Dame football coach Ara Parseghian. Despite these film credits, Miller preferred regional theatre work and kept his screen career sporadic by choice.

In 1982, Miller returned to Scranton to serve as artistic director of the Scranton Public Theatre, a regional company founded the year before and the city in which That Championship Season was set. In that capacity he directed and performed in productions including Blithe Spirit, Harvey, California Suite, Crimes of the Heart, and The Lion in Winter. He also starred as Henry Drummond opposite Malachy McCourt as Matthew Brady in a Philadelphia production of Inherit the Wind. In 1998, Miller toured nationally in his one-man play Barrymore's Ghost, concluding the tour with a four-month off-Broadway run. In October 2000, he performed the same work in a production directed by Michael Leland at Theatre Double's main stage in Philadelphia.

Miller's final project was a 2001 revival of The Odd Couple for the Pennsylvania Summer Theatre Festival, in which he was scheduled to play Oscar Madison. He died of a heart attack on May 13, 2001, in Scranton, Pennsylvania, before the production opened. He was 62. Miller was the father of actors Jason Patric, by his first wife Linda Gleason, daughter of Jackie Gleason, and Joshua John Miller, by his second wife Susan Bernard. In March 2011, the first Broadway revival of That Championship Season opened with a cast that included Brian Cox, Kiefer Sutherland, Jim Gaffigan, and Jason Patric, who placed an urn containing his father's ashes on the set during the production. In 2004, Paul Sorvino was commissioned by the city of Scranton to create a bronze bust of Miller, which was unveiled in December 2008.