I had a good friend (female) in college who studied with Robert Hegyes at Stella Adler's school. I got to go to a couple of their activities. It was pretty interesting (what they were learning etc) He was a very nice guy (this was after Kotter) and he and a couple of other people in the group had worked a lot at that point, but all were cool and acted like 'not stars'.
RIP Epstein (robert hegyes, not so much the other one) things I did not know til today, he was a cousin to Mario Lanza!