Cathy Haase is an American stage and film actress, writer and educator. She attended Franconia College in New Hampshire and graduated summa cum laude in Theater and Film from City University of New York in 2011. Since 1996, she has taught acting at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.
In the early 1980s she worked in Germany where she appeared in half a dozen films. She played the lead role in "Schluckauf", the last film of Roland Klick. She settled in New York where she acted in theatre. Her first important film role in the United States was that of the stripper Danny Lee in the independent film production The Kill-Off (1989), based on the Jim Thompson novel. The film was directed by Maggie Greenwald. Haase later worked for the same director in The Ballad of Little Jo (1993) as Mrs. Addie. She made numerous other film appearances, including the tough talking bartender in Another 48 Hrs. (1990), directed by Walter Hill.
She recently said, "I'd love to have been one of those Hitchcock blondes. Each female performance seems very original and organic yet very poised and stylized and graceful -- iconic, I suppose, in a way."
In 2003 she published a book called Acting for Film, a how-to book aimed for would-be actors and teachers.