Lee Strasberg: The Mastermind Behind Method Acting

Lee Strasberg (born November 17, 1901, Budzanów, Poland, Austria-Hungary [now Budanov, Ukraine]—died February 17, 1982, New York, New York, U.S.) was a theatre director, teacher, and actor, known as the chief American exponent of “method acting,” in which actors are encouraged to use their own emotional experience and memory in preparing to “live” a role.

Strasberg’s family emigrated to the United States when he was seven, and he grew up on the Lower East Side of New York City. By the age of 15 he had begun acting in plays at the Christie Street Settlement House. He later took lessons at the American Laboratory Theatre, whose instructors, Richard Boleslavsky and Maria Ouspenskaya, had studied in Moscow under Konstantin Stanislavsky. Strasberg began his professional career, as actor and stage manager, in the 1920s with the Theatre Guild. In 1931 he joined with Harold Clurman and Cheryl Crawford to form the Group Theatre, which for 10 years staged a number of brilliant experimental plays, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Men in White (1934).

From 1941 to 1948 Strasberg was in Hollywood for what he later called “an unfruitful but nevertheless educational experience.” In 1948 he was back in Manhattan, having joined the Actors Studio, which had been founded the previous year by Crawford, Elia Kazan, and Robert Lewis, all former associates of the Group Theatre. From 1948 until his death Strasberg was artistic director of the Actors Studio, where he propounded what he called the Method, his adaptation of the Stanislavsky system of dramatic training. Over the years he counseled such actors as Julie Harris, Geraldine Page, Marlon Brando, Anne Bancroft, Rod Steiger, Eli Wallach, Patricia Neal, Sidney Poitier, Dustin Hoffman, and Robert De Niro in this form of method acting, and he developed such noted plays as A Hatful of Rain, Any Wednesday, and The Night of the Iguana.

Strasberg made his film acting debut in The Godfather, Part II (1974) and subsequently appeared in The Cassandra Crossing (1977), …And Justice for All (1979), Boardwalk (1979), and Going in Style (1979). A Dream of Passion, Strasberg’s autobiographical account of the development of method acting, was published posthumously in 1987.

Lee Strasberg on acting

Actor, director, and teacher Lee Strasberg was the chief American exponent of the popular but controversial Stanislavsky “method” of acting, in which actors are encouraged to use their own emotional experience and memory in preparing to “live” a role. (Actress Lillian Gish famously quipped, “It’s ridiculous. How would you portray death if you had to experience it first?”) Strasberg was one of the cofounders in 1931 of the Group Theatre, which for 10 years staged a number of brilliant experimental plays; from 1948 to 1982 he directed the famed Actors Studio, the prestigious professional actors’ workshop in New York City and a leading center of the Stanislavsky method, whose distinguished alumni include Al Pacino and Paul Newman; and in 1974 his role as gangster Hyman Roth in the film The Godfather, Part II earned him an Oscar nomination. Strasberg was also a Britannica contributor, writing the article on “Acting, Directing and Production” for the 1959 printing of Britannica’s 14th Edition (1929–73).

Constantine Stanislavsky (1863–1938) set himself to fuse all the random thought and experiences into a form that could help the beginner and be of service to the experienced actor. His aim was to find a “grammar of acting,” to achieve that level of inspiration, or of living on stage, which great actors had found accidentally and sporadically. Without minimizing the value of voice, speech and body training, which are the actor’s tools, Stanislavsky tried to find means to stimulate and develop the actor’s essential requirements: his concentration, his belief and his imagination. He did not seek to fabricate inspiration, but to create the proper foundation for its appearance.

The actor, according to Stanislavsky, should come on the stage not to play-act but to perform the activities required of the character, to act. His appearance on the stage is not the beginning, but is a continuation of the given circumstances that have previously taken place. The actor trains his concentration so that he is able to create the impression of being private in public. He trains his senses so that he is able to see, hear, touch, taste, smell and relate to the many objects which compose his imaginary situation. He learns to use not only intellectual knowledge but emotional experience by means of affective memory. Wordsworth has defined poetry as originating in “emotion recollected in tranquillity.” Shaw emphasized that “vital art work comes from a cross between art and life.” Thomas Wolfe in one of his short stories and Proust in a passage in “Swann’s Way” have brilliantly described the workings of affective memory. It is not limited to the ability to recreate one’s previously experienced real emotions, but also to learn to repeat previously experienced stage emotions. The actor’s training of himself goes hand in hand with the actor’s work on a role. The actor learns to delve beneath the lines to find the meaning or subtext of a play. He learns to find the “kernel” or core of a part, to find the actions of the character that define the important sections, to set smaller tasks or problems for his concentration throughout each section. In later years Stanislavsky tried to correct the overly intellectual approach of this part of the work by simplifying the action work in terms of physical or psychophysical actions. Some have interpreted this as a reversal of his previous methods. Actually, it was intended not to rule out or contrast with, but to serve as a life belt by means of which the previous preparation and work on a role could be securely held onto, like the notes of a melody.