As it says on my 'about me' I am a student of acting, my acting coach was taught by the 3 most acclaimed acting teachers, he studied with Stella Adler, Sanford Meisner, and at the Actors Studio with Lee Strasberg. I just finished my first workshop based on the Stella Adler's technique (next I start on the Meisner technique and finally Lee Strasberg's "method") and in honor of finishing I wanted to do a blog about Miss Adler and her technique.
Stella Alder was born in 1901, by the age of 4 she was acting on stage. She made her London debut at the age of 18, and her Broadway debut in 1922.
In 1931 she joined the Group Theatre founded by Harold Clurman, Lee Strasberg and Cheryl Crawford, the group was the leading interpreters of the Method acting technique based on the works of Konstantin Stanislavski. In 1934 she broke away from Lee Strasberg on the fundamentals of Method acting, she believed that the actor should create by imagination rather than by "affective memory" as Lee Strasberg believed.
In 1937 she moved to Hollywood where she acted in films under the name Stella Ardler, she was in Shadow of the Thin Man, Love on Toast, and My Girl Tisa.
She moved back to New York City in 1941 and began to teach, in 1949 she founded the Stella Adler Conservatory. She was the only American actor to be instructed in the art of acting by Konstantin Stanislavski. Stella's technique is what Stanislavski taught her in the two weeks she studies privately with him, that the imaginary circumstances, all the emotions in the script would surface organically.
Some of the actors Stella taught are: Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro, Warren Beatty, Salma Hayek, Benicio Del Toro, Melanie Griffith, Mark Ruffalo, among a long list of others.
She died in 1992. The acting studios Stella founded in New York and Los Angeles are still in operation today.
