Playwright John Pielmeier hit a home run with his first full professional effort, “Agnes of God,” which ran on Broadway for more than a year in 1982.

Among his latest works is the adaptation of the head-turning book, “The Exorcist,” which debuted in Los Angeles in 2012. It is expected to premier in England later and may land on Broadway eventually.

In between, Pielmeier has enjoyed much success on the regional stage, as well as the national screen. And the 67-year-old hasn’t a clue as to why he started acting, writing and producing plays in his family’s living room while growing up in the Fairview neighborhood of Altoona.

“I don’t know where it came from,” he said recently during a telephone interview from his Garrison, N.Y., home. “There weren’t any other performers in my family.”

Pielmeier (pronounced PEEL-mi-yur) said he was writing plays long before he saw his first one, “Richard III,” at the Mishler Theatre when he was in the eighth grade.

Lifelong friend and Catholic school classmate Dan Dilucchio said Pielmeier was the smartest guy around but had an uncanny focus that would serve him well in life. He said one of his first memories was when he and Pielmeier performed the hilarious Lucille Ball routine called “Vitameatavegamin” during their days at the now-closed St. Therese Catholic School.

“Either it was for a class, for the parents, I can’t remember,” said Dilucchio, who for 33 years has been a partner in a management consultant firm in the Philadelphia area. “I thought about that moment later in life that John already had an interest in entertaining and in acting then. He just took it to a new level.”

Another childhood friend, Sonny Consiglio, said Pielmeier always had the unusual knack of having friends from across the spectrum at St. Therese and later at Bishop Guilfoyle Catholic High School.

“He’s a good guy. Always was. It was that rare situation where the top academic kid could get along with just about anybody,” said Consiglio, a teacher and principal at St. Mary’s Catholic School in Altoona for years before becoming executive director of the St. Vincent de Paul Society 14 years ago. “I couldn’t have predicted playwright, but I kind of knew John was going to do something special.”

It happened sooner than usual, as Pielmeier’s success with “Agnes of God” made him a recognizable name by the 1980s. That was followed up with his adaptation of the play for the screen, which was made into a movie starring Jane Fonda, Anne Bancroft and Meg Tilly in 1985.

Fast forward to his adaptation of “The Exorcist,” which premiered at the Geffen Playhouse nearly four years ago and starred Richard Chamberlain as the demon-banishing priest Father Merrin and Brooke Shields as the mother. Pielmeier fully expects his adapted production to eventually land in London’s West End and Broadway.

In Pielmeier’s show, you won’t see the demon-possessed Regan turning her head all the way around her body or spewing vile green vomit.

“My adaptation is of the novel, not the movie,” he said of the 1971 book by William Peter Blatty, who blessed the playwright’s efforts at extrapolation.

Growing up in Altoona

Evidence of Pielmeier’s Catholic raising is laced through that and “Agnes,” but it’s not an overwhelming theme of his work, he said. Growing up in Altoona wasn’t scary at all; in fact, it was somewhat comforting.

He realized in 1987 – after reading about the construction of Interstate 99 connecting Altoona to the Pennsylvania Turnpike – why he found his hometown so comforting. It would be the last city of its size in the lower 48 states to be connected to the rest of the world by something other than a two-lane highway.

“Altoona was kind of an island; it was like growing up on an island in a positive way,” he said. “Surrounded by mountains, it had this sense of pleasant isolation to it that I found very soothing.”

After growing up he found himself attracted to islands literally and in literature – he just returned from a trip to Iceland with his wife.

He also grew up in a house that had been in his mother’s family for years, on 24th Avenue at 13th Street, “a very comfortable neighborhood.”

Pielmeier’s father, Len, co-owned and operated a family grocery store, Pielmeier’s Market, across town on First Avenue at 14th Street. It was famous for its meats, including a Christmas sauerkraut and homemade veal loaves. Louise Pielmeier was a stay-at-home mother.

The youngster attended the neighborhood Catholic school at the Cathedral, and later St. Therese when it opened. At Bishop Guilfoyle, the senior class always performed a play, but Pielmeier was more involved with the Altoona Community Theatre, where he played a small part in “An-nie Get Your Gun,” his first performance outside the family living room.

In 1966, he graduated from Bishop Guilfoyle.

An actor, playwright and director

Pielmeier said he only applied to Catholic colleges with a performing arts program, which helped winnow his options to Catholic American University in Washington, D.C. There, he did a lot of acting, but a mandatory junior-level course on playwriting forced him to study that aspect of theater. An encouraging professor gave him a choice of writing a final paper or a play.

“That’s where I wrote my first play, apart from the fourth grade,” he said.

After that academic year, he wrote another play, then he took a directing course. Then he directed the play he wrote. He graduated with a B.A. in 1970.

“I very much wanted to go to grad school,” Piel-meier said. “I was a pretty shy and retiring guy. I didn’t have a lot of confidence, and New York would have eaten me up. I would have been miserable if I had gone there straight away.”

To be nearer to his ailing father, Pielmeier applied to the graduate acting program at Penn State University. He wasn’t accepted, so he applied to the graduate playwright program and won admittance, including a Shubert Foundation Fellowship.

But before he completed his master’s of fine arts degree, he left school for a paid acting gig in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and then worked several regional theaters, acting and writing, in and around Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Pielmeier later was able to submit one of the plays he wrote during that time as his thesis, and by 1978, he had his MFA.

“I learned a tremendous amount at Penn State,” he said. “There was one particular teacher, since passed, who taught me so much of what I know about drama, both writing and performing.

“I was lucky. It’s so important in one’s growing up and maturing … to find some kind of mentor, and that’s not something you can plan, but you find someone who sees something in you and is willing to help that something move forward.”

By that time, Pielmeier had the confidence to move to New York City, and he started working on his most famous play, “Agnes,” with the first draft completed in the summer of 1978. It was first staged at the Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights’ Conference, premiered professionally in a Louisville, Kentucky, theater, followed by several regional productions, and then a 17-month run on Broadway.

Writing for the stage and TV

When “Agnes” took off, Pielmeier stopped acting and focused on writing. His credits include “Courage,” a play about “Peter Pan” author J.M. Barrie; “Voices in the Dark,” a thriller that appeared on Broadway; and a Vietnam War drama, “The Boys of Winter,” which also appeared on Broadway in 1985, as well as at Penn State in 1987.

“I was very proud of this production (at Penn State); much better than the one on Broadway,” Pielmeier said.

Penn State was proud of him, as well, honoring him with an alumni award in 1986. The Blair County Arts Foundation placed him in its Arts Hall of Fame in 2003.

Meanwhile, Pielmeier didn’t restrict himself to the stage; he wrote a television movie about three American missionaries killed in El Salvador. “Choices of the Heart” starred Melissa Gilbert and Helen Hunt in 1983, and it netted Pielmeier several awards, including a Christopher Award and a Humanitas Prize for the values promoted in the film.

Other made-for-TV movies followed, including “Sins of the Father” on FX; “The Capture of the Green River Killer,” a miniseries on Lifetime Movie Network in 2008; and, “The Memory Keeper’s Daughter,” which also aired on Lifetime and was nominated for an Emmy for Best Television Movie in 2008.

Pielmeier adapted the autobiography of Dr. Ben Carson, “Gifted Hands,” into a telelvision movie that premiered on TNT in 2009. He stayed in Carson’s home, observed the doctor firsthand in the operating room and went on rounds to see patients.

“He was very generous,” Pielmeier said.

But he said he didn’t anticipate Carson’s political career as the two never discussed politics.

“Politically, we are on opposite sides of the stream, so I wouldn’t vote for him,” Pielmeier said prior to Carson dropping out of the race for the Republican nomination for president. “But I have all the respect in the world for him. He is a generously warm human being.”

Pielmeier also wrote the TV adapation for several best-selling novels, including Ken Follett’s “The Pillars of the Earth,” an eight-hour series that aired internationally beginning in July 2010. It received three Golden Globe nominations and an Emmy nomination, among other awards.

Love of acting, writing continues

Although it was a love of acting that brought him to the theater, Pielmeier has only recently returned to that medium. It has become “more of an avocation” that enables him to enjoy it more, he said.

So, which medium is his favorite?

“I go with whatever is happening at the time in my life,” he said, non-commitally.

And he couldn’t name his “favorite” actors with whom he has worked.

“It would be impossible … if only because they are all so different and so many,” he said.

When pressed, though, Pielmeier did drop a few names.

“The three women who did the original Broadway production of ‘Agnes’ – Elizabeth Ashley, the late Geraldine Page and Amanda Plummer – were absolutely terrific, as was Diahann Carroll, who took over when Elizabeth went on tour with the play,” he said.

He mentioned Judith Ivey and Harry Groener, who starred in his “Voices in the Dark” and “Sleight of Hand,” as being “quite versatile” actors who have become his friends.

“As an actor, I worked with Judith Light, who still amazes, as well as many incredibly talented lesser-known actors – such as Adale O’Brien and the late Anne Pitoniak and … Oh, I can’t begin to fully answer this question, there are so, so many,” he said.

He did allow that “Pillars” was his favorite television work because he was proud of his adaptation and he was able to act in it, as well.

“It was just all around very memorable and pleasant,” he said.

As his circle of friends has expanded to include the famous, Pielmeier still hasn’t forgotten his old ones. And while his parents have long passed and his sole sister lives in Miami, he occasionally visits Altoona and some cousins who remain here, and he plans to attend his high-school reunion this summer.

“We still see each other a lot,” said Dilucchio. “He’s been a wonderful friend. He’s got a lovely home that overlooks the Hudson River directly across from West Point (Military Academy). He and his wife are just wonderful, talented people.

“Frankly, he deserves everything that has happened to him.”

Pielmeier has been married to Irene O’Garden since 1982 when they met on the acting trail. She is a successful playwright, poet and published author in her own right, including her critically acclaimed play, “Women on Fire.”

“Irene and I try to avoid any competition with each other. Besides, she’s a better writer than I could ever hope to be,” he said.

Pielmeier isn’t finished working. He will write and re-write. And he suggested a new production of “Agnes” will return to the stage in New York or London, although there comes a point where he sends his “babies out into the world, when they have to survive on their own merits,” he said.

His is a lifelong journey that continues.

“I was raised in a devout Catholic family, and, I grew up with that,” Pielmeier said. “Obviously, I came to a point where I started questioning many of the things that we had been told as children, like so many people have done. But I am fascinated with those kinds of life journeys that people take. You go on those journeys, questions have to be asked. Whether they are satisfying, whether answers are found, depends on the individual.

“For me, I’m still looking.”

Mirror Life Writer Cherie Hicks is at 949-7030.