The great acting teachers of the past century—those devotees of Stanislavsky who left an indelible mark on the world of theatre, film, and television—were a contentious lot. Larger than life and fully aware that they were breaking new ground in America, they each took elements of the Russian master's teachings and shaped them to their own individual sensibilities.
All aimed to create a set of reliable techniques for American actors. But egos often clashed. To this day we remember not only their words of wisdom but also the nasty things Sanford Meisner said about Lee Strasberg, and vice versa, and how Stella Adler came back from Russia and claimed she knew the one true way.
Many of today's prominent teachers studied with the brilliant minds of that earlier era, but they no longer clump together in an incestuous mass in New York, although most started their careers there. Instead they've migrated to Los Angeles—and elsewhere—and often travel the world, teaching and coaching.
And unlike some of their mentors, they don't waste time squabbling about whose method is better. Many encourage their students to conflate different methods and find out what works for them.
The teachers below (arranged alphabetically) are Los Angeles–based—except for Larry Moss, who recently relocated to New York but continues to teach in L.A.—and were chosen because they have been teaching for at least 20 years and have a good reputation among local actors. Most have also written books, are or have been actors and directors, and studied with the greats. Their priorities differ, but most mention script analysis, listening and connecting, imagination, objectives, actions, and obstacles.
Ivana Chubbuck
"What's going on in your life today?" Ivana Chubbuck asks actors at the beginning of every session. That leads to other questions, which ultimately lead Chubbuck and the actor to an understanding of "how to most effectively portray this role and ultimately become the person you're playing."
Although Chubbuck, who has been teaching for 25 years, encourages actors to dig deep into their life experiences—and shows them how to use compelling substitutions to make the character's circumstances real and important—there's a caveat. "I take the pain and trauma of human life and use it not as an end in itself but as a way to fuel the journey and goals of the particular character," she says. "The journey tells the story, and if we're not telling the story, all we're doing is emoting."
That balance—between connecting to the deepest, most personal emotions and moving the writer's story forward—is all-important; Chubbuck says she watched too many actors using their authentic feelings to share their suffering rather than to provoke action. That inspired her to develop, through trial and error, her own techniques. "Accomplishing the goal against all obstacles that get in your way—attempting to win, whatever that means in regard to your character," Chubbuck views as the actor's main mission.
Among her famous students are Charlize Theron, Halle Berry, Brad Pitt, and Elisabeth Shue.
Recommended reading: Chubbuck's The Power of the Actor: The Chubbuck Technique (Gotham Books, 2004).
www.ivanachubbuck.com
Howard Fine
Students at Howard Fine's studio, even at the master-class level, regularly do Uta Hagen's 10 "object" exercises. Fine was a colleague of Hagen's in New York, and what he loves about her work is that it's practical.
Teaching for more than 30 years, he runs a "bit of a conservatory" with classes that include Alexander Technique and singing. "We work on the total instrument, no quick fixes," says Fine. He eschews the Hollywood market, doesn't separate the craft of film acting from stage acting, doesn't hold showcases, and uses only play scripts in scene study classes.
"There is no 'character,'" he says. "The idea of character is one of the most misunderstood concepts. How many characters do you play in the course of the day? A lot. They're all you. I want actors to look inside themselves and find out all of who they really are, not put a character on from the outside. If you look at a script and say, 'That's not me,' then there's a part of yourself you don't see." He acknowledges humans have a natural tendency to not want to see their own negative behavior. He adds, "My big thing is: Don't judge."
He has taught such stars as Brad Pitt, Jennifer Connelly, Salma Hayek, and Lindsay Lohan, and is working on a book to be called The Acting Trap: The Most Common Mistakes Actors Make and How to Avoid Them.
Recommended reading: Uta Hagen's A Challenge for the Actor (Scribner, 1991).
www.howardfine.com
Maria Gobetti
Maria Gobetti, one of the founders and artistic directors of the Victory Theatre Center, has been teaching the techniques of her teacher, Meisner, for 30 years. It's about fully listening to and dealing with your partner, she explains. She has said in a past interview, "If you are really outer-focused on your partner, your emotional life will come forth effortlessly."
She also learned from Meisner colleague Edward Kaye-Martin. "He added extraordinarily specific and easy ways to prepare prior to doing a scene," she says.
Gobetti defines herself as a kind but "pretty demanding" teacher, commenting, "I don't like tepid work. I like work that is electric and committed." She encourages actors to do a lot of physical training—whether with her or with a dance teacher—so that they're not talking heads in close-ups, and advises them to "lend yourself totally with all six senses to communicating with your partner and to exploring the role." What is the sixth sense? Instinct, of course.
Prominent students include Cady Huffman, Stephen Tobolowsky, Armin Shimerman, and Beth Henley (who wrote Crimes of the Heart while taking Gobetti's class).
Recommended reading: Meisner's Sanford Meisner on Acting (Vintage Books, 1987).
www.thevictorytheatrecenter.org
Margie Haber
The inventor of the "Haber Phrase Technique"—a cold-reading system that involves absorbing clumps of text rather than prememorizing word-for-word—Margie Haber is best-known as the go-to person for audition skills. But she's much more than that: For the past 35 years she has been teaching skills she learned from one of her many teachers, actor-director Corey Allen. "He influenced me to make it more important about the other person than about yourself," she says.
She believes most actors focus on intention at the expense of relationship. "How can you have a strong intention if you don't know how you feel about the other person?" she asks. "The connection to the person in front of you is your hook."
When you make the other person more important than you, she adds, the trick is to let go of the natural tendency to "perform," to emotionalize. "It's about communication and connection," she notes.
Haber has refined her phrase technique over time, teaching it now more as a natural rhythm than as a complicated technique. The technique also supports relationship and intention, she says. She's streamlined her teaching methods in general, making the work less structured, more experiential.
Her students and coachees include Heather Locklear, Vince Vaughn, Sophia Bush, and Sherri Shepherd, and she is currently preparing an audiotape on what to do 20 minutes before the audition.
Recommended reading: Haber's How to Get the Part…Without Falling Apart (Lone Eagle Publishing, 1999).
www.margiehaber.com
Milton Katselas
The esteemed founder of the Beverly Hills Playhouse is also an architect, artist, director, and author—his book Dreams Into Action was a bestseller after he appeared on Oprah. He has been teaching for about 45 years and studied, at least briefly, with Strasberg, Hagan, Adler, a member of the Moscow Art Theatre, and others. His personal mentors, though, were directors Elia Kazan and Joshua Logan.
These days he works closely with sense memory—"how you feel when you're cold, what happens to you in the sun"—and the ways that sense memory influences the actor in preparation and in the work. "We have to awaken our senses as much as we do our imagination," he says.
He also emphasizes the many choices to be made when inhabiting a character. "We try to put [alternatives] in the forefront of the work so the actor isn't trapped by the story," he explains. "A story can go a lot of different ways. What part of the story are you, how does the spine of the character affect the whole work? The actor is in essence the writer. No disrespect to a writer: I'm a writer, and as a director I've worked with Tennessee Williams, William Inge, many great writers. [But actors] need to take charge, make their own choices, be bold and imaginative, not just fit into a pattern."
Among his master-class students have been Doris Roberts, Robert Duvall, Richard Gere, and Michelle Pfeiffer.
Recommended reading: Katselas' Dreams Into Action (Phoenix Books, 2005).
www.katselas.com
Harry Mastrogeorge
The éminence grise of them all is Harry Mastrogeorge, who has been teaching for 49 years. He sticks as close to Stanislavsky as possible, declaring, "None of the popularly accepted techniques has influenced me whatsoever." One man at the American Academy of Dramatic Art, Charles Jehlinger, who taught Spencer Tracy, Anne Bancroft, and Edward G. Robinson, was his role model. "I base everything on acting being a mentality, and I minimize the concepts of technique," explains Mastrogeorge. "I plug into the way we behave as human beings. I emphasize the use of the limitless, infinite power of your imagination."
He focuses on five elements: innocence, imagination, vulnerability, concentration, and homework. "The less you think like an actor and the more childlike and innocent you are, the more productive you'll be," he says, adding, "I invented none of it. To me, it's all natural law. It's a state of mind.... [It's about] practicing the potential qualities that you were born with."
He prefers not to name the prominent actors who have worked with him, but he's been credited in TV biographies of a few stars, including Melanie Griffith and Darryl Hannah.
Recommended reading: Stanislavsky's An Actor Prepares (Routledge, 1989; first published in 1936).
www.ameliaproductions.com
Eric Morris
Eric Morris has been teaching for 45 years, but for the first 10, people poked fun at him, saying he was practicing therapy without a license. That stopped, he says, when actors went on Johnny Carson proclaiming, "I owe all to the work I do in Eric's class."
"I liberate the actor's instrument," says Morris. Actors can choose from among 30 different approaches and more than 200 separate exercises that Morris has honed over time, all aimed toward freeing them from emotional blocks—social obligations, dependencies, childhood conditioning—that cripple them. The resulting newfound freedom of expression is in service of the craft. "Unless the actor is free to act, he can't really be organic," Morris explains. The actor must experience what the author says the character is experiencing—but must arrive there by using his own life choices and experiences. "Living problems become acting problems," notes Morris.
Rooted in Stanislavsky, Morris' approach was influenced by his teachers: Strasberg and Martin Landau. Morris considers himself a Method teacher who is willing to go beyond Strasberg in engaging students on an intensely personal level. "I deal with programming the unconscious, which is where most of our talent lives," he says. He is currently finishing his sixth book, The Diary of A Professional Experiencer: An Autobiographical Journey Into the Evolution of an Acting System, and has four more planned after that.
Among his most famous students are Jack Nicholson, Priscilla Barnes, Sue Lyon, and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Recommended reading: Morris' No Acting Please, Being and Doing, Irreverent Acting, Acting From the Ultimate Consciousness, and Acting, Imaging and the Unconscious (Spelling Publications, various dates).
www.ericmorris.com
Larry Moss
A fixture in the Los Angeles scene for 15 years and a teacher for 29, Larry Moss recently returned to New York, where he is currently directing. He intends to continue teaching in L.A. From Meisner, his first teacher, he learned the "absolute necessity of being present in the moment, sensitive to what's coming at you, spontaneous rather than preprogrammed. That forces you to find your own authenticity."
From Adler he learned the importance of understanding the background of the play, the themes, each character's socioeconomic status. "She opened my eyes to where character truly comes from, where characters' emotional centers are," he says. It all informs his teaching.
"How do actors create new behavior that's believable, and where does that behavior come from?" he asks, adding that the answer is in fully understanding "what the writer was trying to write about.... People don't honor the script enough. If what you're doing is not connected to the script, what are you doing?" The most important thing he teaches is "emotional truth and an understanding of the emotional reasons why the characters take their actions. And understanding that characters are never what they say, only what they do."
Along those lines, he is planning a new book that's a compilation of 10 plays broken into script analysis—carrying on Adler's teachings.
Some famous Moss students are Hilary Swank, Helen Hunt, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Jim Carrey.
Recommended reading: Moss' The Intent to Live (Bantam Books, 2005).
www.larrymoss.net
Doug Warhit
"Problems arise when actors try to compare which [approach] is best," says Doug Warhit, who studied with Strasberg, Adler, Meisner, and Michael Shurtleff. "All those great originators provided great tools, and I try to provide an amalgam, so the actor has as many tools as possible."
Early on in his 20-year teaching career, which is geared toward preparation for film- and TV auditions, Warhit realized that self-sabotage and performance anxiety were hampering actors just as much as were the challenges of craft. Now, with an M.A. in psychotherapy and a license in marriage- and family therapy, he helps actors deal with issues through hypnotherapy and neurolinguistic programming. It's all about empowering the actor the minute he or she walks into the room.
"Acting is about letting go of control, trusting impulses in the moment, listening, playing off the other person, and preparation in terms of prior circumstances," says Warhit. He poses 10 essential questions, including: What do I want? Who/what keeps me from getting it? What will I do to get what I want? What is my relationship to the others? Do others help or hinder me? How does what happened before the scene impact me? How does the scene's setting impact me? What can I write at the top of the scene and silently repeat that will immediately involve me in the scene?
Warhit declines to mention his most famous students, saying he prefers not to use their names as promotional tools.
Recommended reading: Warhit's The Actor's Audition Checklist and Book the Job (Dau Publishing, 2003).
www.dougwarhit.com BSW