LIVE The Imagined Life

35 years of teaching and coaching. Countless actors transformed, experiencing freedom and authenticity in their work and play. Diana Castle’s acting philosophy is rooted in “acting as the art of the empathetic imagination” and her passionate teaching is fueled by her mission to awaken empathy in our world by mirroring back diverse human stories- one actor at a time. 

Her father survived Hitler’s holocaust, her mother, the blitz of London. Born in Manhattan, raised in South Carolina, Diana is the first born child of The American Dream. Diana’s dream became a reality when, in 1995, alongside her husband Steve Tietsort, she opened the doors of their 5000 square foot building and The Imagined Life® studio. A labor of love, Diana and Steve worked together to create the warm and welcoming place that currently houses two studios, along with a 70 seat theatre space - the Los Angeles homebase of The Imagined Life acting school.

Their yearly SOLO Festival featured the talents of 7x Emmy Award winner Lily Tomlin and 6x Tony Award winner Julie Harris. Their production of Split Second, won an NAACP Award and the world premiere of Asylum directed by Diana, garnered more critical acclaim and awards. 

Diana recurred on the hit comedy Seinfeld (Mrs. Zanfino), guest starred on numerous television shows and gets a kick out of the yearly Thanksgiving airing of her very first film role in the iconic Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Diana is honored to have played alongside the magnificent 6x Tony Award winner Julie Harris in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. The production also starred Vincent Gardenia and was directed by the Charles Nelson Reilly. She has fond memories of working with the late Olympia Dukakis in The New Montana at The Public Theatre. She starred in the critically acclaimed NYC productions of Romulus Linney’s Holy Ghosts (Nancy Shedman), In the Middle of Nowhere: The Music of Randy Newman at The Astor Place and Seesaw (Gittel Mosca). She has played on stages worldwide, touring with Lion King creator Julie Taymor’s Juan Darien, and national tours of Evita (Eva Peron u/s) and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (The Narrator u/s). Other favorites include Hecuba (Hecuba/Workshop 360), Rita (Educating Rita/PA Stage Co.), Bodey Bodenhoffer (A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur/San Diego Rep), Audrey (Little Shop of Horrors/ San Diego Rep), and starring as Wilma in the world premiere of Big Love writer Will Scheffer's "Easter" directed by Steve Tietsort, winning best director and best actress awards. 

She’s a graduate of The Fine Arts Center of Greenville County S.C., a BFA graduate of Florida State University- majoring in theatre and minoring in music. In the 1980's, Diana studied acting with the late Harry Mastrogeorge, and apprenticed at The Burt Reynolds Institute for Theatre Training, where she is grateful to have learned from and worked with many of the luminaries of the time, including Sally Field, Burt Reynolds and Jon Voight. There, Diana also met a mentor in Charles Nelson Reilly, who became a dear and cherished friend.  

For her innovative, self-styled, out of the box thinking, Diana received the Maverick Award by The Los Angeles Women's Theatre Festival, is featured on Deepak Chopra’s “30 Days of Intent” for the Chopra Well, and enjoyed presenting alongside neuroscientist Lisa Aziz-Zadeh for The Screen Actors Guild speaker series “Empathizing with the Enemy.” 

Diana worked as the onset coach for the celebrity guest stars on the long running hit television series Touched by an Angel, enjoyed being a guest professor at the Columbia College program at Raleigh Studios and she delights in being a guest teacher at Act- Escola de Actores in Lisbon, Portugal. She’s contributed to The Huffington Post and Edwin Rutsch’s Culture of Empathy, and mentors artists in the Creative Activist program at Creative Visions Foundation as well as for The Speranza Foundation. 

Her play “Carry the World: Women and Peace”, picked up for television development, starring Academy Award nominee and Emmy Award winning actress Shohreh Aghdashloo, has been performed at The Museum of Tolerance, Pepperdine University, The California Institution for Women and The Imagined Life theatre space.

Diana is proud to have mentored two of her students, Faline England and Lacy Fisher, into amazing teachers and coaches. She is deeply grateful to them for their more than a decade of empathic teaching and for all of their heartfelt and committed efforts towards the studio and every TIL student. 

Diana will never be able to express the depth of love and gratitude in her heart for her husband of 30 years, Steve Tietsort, and his extraordinary wisdom, courage and compassion as a husband, partner and teacher of The Imagined Life. 

When Covid ‘19 hit, Diana moved TIL services online, expanding the reach of the studio beyond Los Angeles in weekly classes and one on one coaching, with actors attending from NYC to Atlanta, from New Zealand to Canada and beyond. While she continues to offer in person classes and coaching at her theatre space in Los Angeles, this online expansion has turned out to be another expression of Diana’s mission to widen our collective empathetic embrace, creating community through the power of diversity in storytelling.