The reader votes for best acting teacher read like a who's who of L.A. teachers; Ivana Chubbuck, Larry Moss, Milton Katselas, and Richard Seyd were singled out time and again by voters. But it was Howard Fine, of Howard Fine Acting Studio in Hollywood, who earned the most votes, and the acclaimed teacher-coach wants to make sure everyone knows the following: "I will not let myself get a big head," he says with a laugh. "To be voted by actors is an incredible honor, and I take it seriously."
With his easygoing demeanor and generous laugh, Fine all but explodes the myth of the screaming, bitter acting teacher that potential students fear. Asked about his appeal, Fine demurs, "You'd have to ask my students. But I can say this about myself: I chose to teach. I'm not angry; I'm not jealous of my students. I'm tough as nails, but I'm not mean. I don't yell and scream. I think teachers that scream have mood disorders. It's also usually a smoke screen for what the teacher doesn't know. My critiques can be quite devastating, but not because I'm trying to be but because I'm specific."
This philosophy reflects that of Fine's mentor, Uta Hagen, whose classes at New York's HB Studio he would sit in on while still a high school student in Rhode Island. "She was never cruel but extremely specific in the work," he notes. "How can you not be inspired by someone who approached acting like a scientist, constantly trying to figure out how to make it better?"
Fine, who directed his first play at age 16, knew early on he had a calling for teaching and coaching. At age 23, he received his first teaching job at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York. "I was right out of grad school. They gave me the worst class the studio had ever had," he recalls. "I turned that class around, and they asked me to head the acting department when I was 24." He moved to L.A. in 1985 and was teaching a group when an agent came to watch an actor in the class. "She didn't like the actor, but she liked me," Fine says. "She was representing Paul Stanley, the lead singer of Kiss, who was looking for an acting coach. She had given him the top three names in Los Angeles and me, a nobody. He brought the same material to each coach and wanted to see what the different coaches would do. He worked with me and said, 'Well, you're my guy.' He was my first celebrity student." The following week, Fine attended Stanley's birthday party, where he suddenly found himself among "all the members of the Brat Pack" and such actors as Robert Downey Jr. and Sarah Jessica Parker. "It suddenly moved me into this area of celebrity acting coach, which I didn't even know existed," he admits. "From one to the next to the next, I suddenly had that type of clientele." In 1988, Fine opened his own studio.
Over the years, Fine's students have included Oscar nominees Brad Pitt and Salma Hayek, and Emmy winners Kim Delaney and Sela Ward. He speaks with a genuine passion about his students, confessing a particular fondness for the actors who move seamlessly from film and TV to the theatre. He cites Michael Chiklis, whom he directed in the Broadway solo show Defending the Caveman, as an example. "He was doing a TV show called Daddio and ready to quit the business," Fine notes. "The Shield audition came up, and they didn't want to see him for it because they didn't think he had the tough guy in him. We worked on the audition, and he scared the hell out of them. He continues to come to coach, even on Fantastic Four." Other recent examples include Alias star Bradley Cooper, who recently wrapped the Broadway revival of Three Days of Rain with Julia Roberts; and Showgirls star Elizabeth Berkley, who won raves opposite Ethan Hawke in Hurlyburly and Richard Dreyfuss in Sly Fox. "Her work has absolutely shifted in the last few years," he says proudly. "The New York Times wrote an almost apologetic review about her." Most of his students, he notes, have been with him for years. "They become more friends than just students," he adds.
A large part of Fine's appeal likely has to do with his love of teaching, and that he isn't using it to bide his time while he pursues another career. "I still direct, but I'm not using it as a steppingstone," he notes. "You either teach acting because you can direct or because you can act yourself, but in the end what you have to be able to do is look at the individual actor and take them where they can go—not to impose what you think they ought to be, but to see who they are. I try to work with each person individually and not to cookie-cutter anybody."
Fine believes that actors pick up on his enthusiasm. "I think actors respond to knowing that I'm happy to be there," he says. "Sometimes I run into ex-students who were not particularly good students, and they say, 'Hey, I'm teaching now!' I'm like, 'Oh, God.' They're teaching because they failed at acting and now they want to teach, as if it's a fallback. You know the old saying, 'Those who can't do, teach'? Uta used to say, 'Only those that can do should teach.'"
Other runners-up are Brian Reise, Leslie Kahn, Harry Mastrogeorge, Adrienne Omansky, and J.D. Lewis.
—Jenelle Riley