Oct. 2 (Bloomberg) -- John Studzinski finds multiple uses for his money, be it to fund an actor's education, a gallery's expansion or a homeless person's lunch.

The U.S.-born philanthropist, senior managing director of Blackstone Group LP, says he gives away half of his after-tax cash compensation to the arts, the homeless, and human rights. Studzinski, who is based in London and New York, declined to disclose his compensation, which is not publicly available.

He has pledged 5 million pounds ($10.2 million) toward Tate Modern's expansion, and gives 1 million pounds a year to train the directors, actors, playwrights and composers of tomorrow.

``It's this whole question of human dignity, which I'm actually not sure anybody in society today understands,'' says Studzinski, in shirtsleeves and a tie, ushering me into a Blackstone boardroom in London bedecked with a print he owns: Patrick Caulfield's take on Picasso's ``Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.''

How do arts and human dignity intersect? ``By giving someone a break, you help their confidence,'' he says. ``I remember when I got my first interview, that first serious job offer on Wall Street -- God, that was...!'' he gasps.

Studzinski is vice-chair of Human Rights Watch, and helped found The Passage, London's biggest homeless day center, where he plans to do voluntary work later that evening.

Our interview finally takes place after four postponements, including a dinner planned the night before at an Italian restaurant near his riverside Chelsea home. The mansion includes a mix of old masters and modern art, five dogs, and a chapel, where the 51-year-old Catholic banker prays, morning and evening.

Swordfish and Risotto

As we pick at a tasty though tepid boardroom lunch of swordfish and mushroom risotto, the banker bars questions about Blackstone, market turmoil, his personal life, his religious beliefs and his house. Our tete-a-tete turns out not to be one: Also present is Mel Cooper, founder of ``Opera Now'' magazine and a former presenter on U.K. radio station Classic FM, who advises the philanthropist's Genesis Foundation.

Genesis offers arts training via partnerships with the Royal Opera House, the Royal Court and Young Vic theaters, and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. Young artists learn to write and direct plays, and compose operas. Studzinski says he hopes to create similar training conduits for choreographers, painters, sculptors and photographers.

His artist laboratory is yielding results. One beneficiary, actor Samuel Barnett, was a 2006 Tony Award nominee for ``The History Boys.'' Another, director Matthew Dunster, has just staged ``The Member of the Wedding'' at the Young Vic.

Artistic Trees

Studzinski says his interest lies in the process, not in the payback. ``I've planted investments that are indefinite,'' he says. ``If only one writer produces great plays, that's still a great gift to humanity. It's like the artistic version of planting trees in Richmond Park for 100 years from now.''

Son of a Polish-born financial manager at General Electric Co.'s aircraft-engine division, Studzinski grew up in a family where the children rose at 5 a.m. to practice piano or read a book. ``If we got eight As and two Bs, it was the two Bs that got discussed,'' he recalls in Charles Handy's 2006 book ``The New Philanthropists.'' ``Any spare time had to be used to further one's education or to do something useful.''

Studzinski worked in soup kitchens as a teenager in Massachusetts, and helped start a toll-free number to inform adolescents about sexually transmitted diseases. He caught the arts-giving bug much later, in 1997, when he commissioned Roxanna Panufnik to write a mass for the late Cardinal Basil Hume's 75th birthday. ``Westminster Mass'' has now become part of the world choral repertory.

High Voltage

Before the interview, I see ``The Ugly One,'' a Studzinski- funded play by Marius von Mayenburg of Germany, staged upstairs at London's Royal Court theater. In it, a high-voltage plug inventor - - played by Michael Gould, who has never heard of Studzinski -- alters his ``ugly'' face through surgery. The four actors never leave the stage; the only prop is a plastic bag.

I meet the Royal Court's Elyse Dodgson, who runs the related playwriting program stretching from Cuba to Syria to Russia. It ``would not live, breathe or exist without John Studzinski,'' she says.

The banker, who spent 22 years at Morgan Stanley and three at HSBC Holdings Plc, says he is often buttonholed by high-society panhandlers. ``You get a lot of flaky things, like `My husband's left me, and I need 10,000 pounds to pay the lawyers,''' he says.

Passionate Projects

Studzinski shuns ``butterfly philanthropy, where you just sprinkle holy water over 10 projects,'' or ``rushed and hurried'' giving, where it's ``write a check, goodbye.'' He favors ventures with passionate masterminds, such as a project, proposed to him by a woman that morning, combining the arts and prison reform.

``I often think that if somebody comes out of the blue and asks you for something, that could be God asking you for something,'' he says. ``It's pretty dangerous for you to turn around and say, 'Oh, I'm not going to talk to them.'''

When not engaged in finance or philanthropy, Studzinski educates himself. The previous Friday night, he watched a four-hour film about Andy Warhol at the British Film Institute. On a hiking trip 30 years ago, he loaded his music player with works by Wagner after someone told him that the German composer's operas could only be appreciated after 10 listens.

His next mission is to nurture new audiences for the arts, particularly opera, something he says he has failed to do so far. ``The 19th-century opera house isn't going to be around forever. Big opera is not the future,'' he says. ``Opera is going to have to reinvent itself in terms of, not just venues, but audiences.''

To lure new audiences on the other side of the Atlantic, he has funded a recital hall with superior acoustics at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, where he got his bachelor's degree.

``When you start with very little in life,'' he says, ``you know that you can go back to having very little, and that's not so bad.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Farah Nayeri in London at Farahn@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: October 2, 2007 01:24 EDT