Lee Strasberg

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Lee Strasberg's grave

Lee Strasberg (born November 17, 1901 in Budzanów, Austria-Hungary (today Budaniw , Ukraine ) as Israel Strassberg , †  February 17, 1982 in New York City ) was an American theater director , important acting teacher and actor. He is considered the founder of method acting .

Life

Lee Strasberg was born in 1901 in what was then Austria-Hungary as the son of Baruch Meyer Strassberg and Chaia Dina, he had three siblings. In 1909 the family emigrated to New York. He attended the Jewish high school there. In 1920 he was invited to join the drama group Students of Arts and Drama . In 1923 Strasberg saw Stanislawski's Moscow Art Theater performances during his tour in America and was deeply impressed. The following year he began acting training with two of the Moscow actors, Richard Boleslawski and Maria Uspenskaya , at the American Laboratory Theater in New York.

In 1931 he founded the legendary Group Theater with Harold Clurman and Cheryl Crawford . In 1933 he directed Men in White , for which the group received the Pulitzer Prize . In 1936 he was the director of Johnny Johnson , one of the first anti-war plays to be produced in America. A short time later he became an American citizen. In 1948 Strasberg took over the artistic direction of the New York Actors Studio as artistic director , which he held until his death. In 1969 the Lee Strasberg Theater and Film Institute (together with Jack Garfein with offices in New York and Los Angeles) was founded with the aim of teaching the method of acting.

Method acting

Strasberg developed the method acting , which was supposed to increase the naturalness and intensity of the acting performance by the actor finding the role in himself with the help of an instrument he developed and merging it with it. Famous students of Strasberg are u. a. James Dean , Marlon Brando , Rod Steiger , Dustin Hoffman , Paul Newman , Harvey Keitel , Robert De Niro , Marcheline Bertrand , Dennis Hopper and Al Pacino . Even Marilyn Monroe and Nico visited the Actors Studio, but were not members.

Even after his death, method acting is seen in many places as a successful method to achieve a high degree of identification of the actor with the character to be portrayed. It is still taught at the Actors Studio. Subsequent generations of actors and well-known representatives such as Johnny Depp , Angelina Jolie , Jack Nicholson and Anthony Hopkins also adopt the method for their role work. On the other hand, Strasberg and his method were also controversial. This emerges from the memories of Arthur Miller , among other things . The playwright, who was married to Marilyn Monroe for the second time, tended to mistake the studio boss for a charlatan. He also cites Elia Kazan's allegation that Strasberg makes the actors who follow him dependent instead of putting them on their own feet. In the Monroe case, as Miller feared, Strasberg's wife Paula took care of the film star's location. "Without Paula she (Marilyn) was lost."

Strasberg also acted as an actor in several films, such as B. in the role of Hyman Roth in the second part of Coppola's godfather trilogy. For these achievements he received nominations for the Oscar and the Golden Globe Award .

family

Strasberg was married three times, first to Nora Krecaun from 1926 until her death in 1929. Marriage to actress Paula Miller began in 1934 and lasted until 1966 when she died of cancer. Miller worked in the Actors Studio as a teacher and supervised Marilyn Monroe. Lee and Paula Strasberg were the parents of actress Susan Strasberg and drama teacher John Strasberg (* 1941). His third wife was Anna Mizrahi (* 1939), the mother of his two youngest children Adam Lee Strasberg and David Lee Israel Strasberg.

Filmography

  • 1937: Fire over Ireland (Parnell)

Fonts

  • Lee Strasberg / Wolfgang Wermelskirch (editors): Acting and the training of the actor . 2nd Edition. Alexander Verlag, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-923854-87-0 .

literature

  • Richard Blank: Acting in theater and film. Strasberg, Brecht, Stanislawski . Alexander Verlag, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89581-068-1 .
  • Richard Boleslawski: "acting - the first six steps" . Translated by Uta Pongratz. Publisher (own values), Wanna 2001, ISBN 3-934080-00-6 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Website of the Lee Strasberg Institute, accessed on November 14, 2010 ( Memento of the original from November 11, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.strasberg.com
  2. ↑ time curves , German edition Frankfurt / Main 1989, page 589, as well as pages 630-632
  3. ↑ Time curves, page 559
personal data
SURNAME Strasberg, Lee
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Strasberg, Israel Lee (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American theater director and acting teacher, co-founder of the "Group Theater" created in 1931
DATE OF BIRTH November 17, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Budzanów, Austria-Hungary (today Budaniw , Ukraine )
DATE OF DEATH 17th February 1982
Place of death New York City