Lee Strasberg

Lee Strasberg (born Israel Strasberg; November 17, 1901 – February 17, 1982) was a Polish-born American actor, director, and theatre practitioner. He was born in a part of Galicia, Austrian Poland, in what is now Ukraine. He co founded, with directors Harold Clurman and Cheryl Crawford, the Group Theatre in 1931, which was hailed as "America's first true theatrical collective". In 1951, he became director of the nonprofit Actors Studio in New York City, considered "the nation's most prestigious acting school", and in 1966, was involved in the creation of Actors Studio West in Los Angeles. Although other highly regarded teachers also developed "the Method", Strasberg is often considered the "father of method acting in America", according to author Mel Gussow, and from the 1920s until his death in 1982, "he revolutionized the art of acting by having a profound influence on performance in American theater and movies". From his base in New York, he trained several generations of theatre and film notables, including Anne Bancroft, Dustin Hoffman, Montgomery Clift, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Jane Fonda, Julie Harris, Paul Newman, Ellen Burstyn, Al Pacino, Geraldine Page, Eli Wallach, and directors Frank Perry and Elia Kazan. By 1970, Strasberg had become less involved with the Actors Studio, and with his third wife Anna, opened the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute with branches in New York City and in Hollywood, to continue teaching the 'system' of Konstantin Stanislavski, which he had interpreted and developed, particularly in light of the ideas of Yevgeny Vakhtangov, for contemporary actors. The institute's primary stated goal was "to reach a larger audience of eager and emerging talent" than was served by the Actors Studio's notoriously selective admission process, and as teachers of the method began to deploy their own personal interpretations of the discipline, "to dispel growing confusion and misrepresentation of the method, preserving what had by now become fundamental discoveries in actor training." The Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute has its own rigorous sets of entrance criteria required for admission into their program. Former student Elia Kazan directed James Dean in East of Eden (1955), for which Kazan and Dean were nominated for Academy Awards. As a student, Dean wrote that Actors Studio was "the greatest school of the theater [and] the best thing that can happen to an actor