American director Lee Strasberg: biography, films

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Lee Strasberg is a director, founder of the Theater Institute of his own name for the professional training of actors. Among his students are several dozen movie stars of the first magnitude. In every film studio located in Hollywood, followers of the master's theory will certainly be found, and some of his adherents themselves pass on the experience gained from Strasberg to the younger generation.

Short biography

The maestro was born on November 17, 1901 in the town of Buldanovo, Ternopil region. This small town is located in Ukraine. The family was small, purely Jewish with Orthodox principles. Parents - Boruz-Meir and Ida Strasberg - soon moved to the United States with their son. There he spent all his childhood and youth.

1931 was the year of Lee's development as a director. He created the creative theater group Group Theatre. In parallel, Lee Strasberg taught at the school of artistic skill, which was called the "Actors Studio". In 1952, he became its leader, based onteaching students the Stanislavsky system. "Lee Strasberg Actors Studio" immediately became popular in the creative environment. The institution graduated from many famous artists who later became Hollywood stars. Among them, such famous people stand out: Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino, Paul Newman, Marilyn Monroe and Jane Fonda. In 1966, the Western Actors Studio was established in Los Angeles. And three years later, the director founded the Lee Strasberg Theater Arts Institute.

Strasberg as a performer of roles

From time to time he acted in this or that film as an actor. He needed this in order to feel the role from the inside, to understand what the performer feels when he is in this or that image. For his supporting role in Francis Coppola's The Godfather, Lee Strasberg was nominated for an Oscar and a Golden Globe.

However, all of Strasberg's attention was drawn to his theater institute. From the very beginning, the activity of the educational institution was limited to an extremely small enrollment of students. Those lucky few who passed the competition and received the legal right to attend lectures were no match for the huge number of people who wanted to take a seat in the audience. The selection was extremely strict. For example, Jack Nicholson auditioned five times, Dustin Hoffman six, and many actors left disappointed. Two vacancies went to Martin Landau and Steve McQueen, despite the fact that two places received more than four thousand applications.

Chekhov

LeeStrasberg gave a lot of time and effort to theaters on Broadway. Soon he became one of the most popular directors. In 1964, Lee showed his last performance on this stage - based on Chekhov's story "Three Sisters". The leitmotif of the play, as you know, is general disappointment, a minor atmosphere that grows every year, as well as melancholy and hopelessness.

Russian mentality can easily cope with such problems. Our people are used to the fact that fun happens, but not so often. Most of the time you have to be bored. Strasberg faced a difficult task: to make smiling American actors sad in the Russian manner. Nevertheless, the performance turned out well.

Al Pacino Proposal

In 1974, one of the actors of The Godfather, Al Pacino, who portrayed the character of Michael Corleone on the screen, invited the maestro to play a minor, but very prominent role in the film's sequel. For the created image, Lee Strasberg received nominations for Oscar and Golden Globe. In 1979, the director starred as the character Sam Kirkland in the film Justice for All. The film was directed by Norman Jewison and starred Al Pacino.

Lee Strasberg Methods

The well-known, repeatedly proven principles of teaching acting skills, the master reduces to two fundamental methods: constant improvisation and emotional memory, trained and trouble-free. Using these techniques, the artist can expand his range as much as he wants, which means that his possibilities as a performer become almostunlimited.

Lee Strasberg, whose method of acting is based largely on the postulates of Russian theatrical art, successfully develops the theory of Stanislavsky, his deep dramaturgy. There is no true dramatic art in America (tearful melodramas do not count). Therefore, Lee Strasberg, with his original theories, very successfully took pride of place in a separate niche. And it is not for nothing that his teachings and practices are in such high demand today.

Filmography

During his career as an educator, Lee Strasberg has trained dozens of film actors, many of whom are still in the top twenty Hollywood superstars today. In addition, the director himself starred in films if his character corresponded to the storyline of the project. The following is a list of films starring Lee Strasberg as an actor.

• "Storm in a teacup" (1937), the role of Willie;
• "The Godfather 2" (1974), character Hyman Roth;
• "The Third Man" (1949), the role of a military police officer;
• "Macbeth" (1961), Seiton's character;
• "Long Day" (1962), the role of Sergeant Foster;
• "Cassandra's Pass" (1976), Geman Kaplan's character;
• "Justice for All" (1979), the role of Sam Kirkland;
• Promenade (1979), character by David Rosen;
• "It's nice to leave" (1979), the role of Willy.

Lee Strasberg's debut film "Storm in a Teapot", where he played a microscopic role, had no effect on his career. And yet this filmincluded in his filmography.

Private life

In 1926, the director was legally married to Nora Krekyan. They did not live together for long: three years later the woman died. The second chosen one of the master was the dramatic actress and teacher Paula Miller. This marriage also became fleeting. Paula died of cancer in 1966. However, in this marriage two children were born: Suzanne and John. The third wife of Lee Strasberg, Anna Mizrachi, was forty years younger than her husband. From her, the master had two more sons. Thus, Lee Strasberg had four heirs.

The Hollywood star, actress Marilyn Monroe, was of great importance in the director's personal life. They were connected by many years of friendship. After her tragic death, Monroe left two-thirds of her fortune to Strasberg. He died on February 17, 1982 in New York from a heart attack. Ironically, one day before Lee Strasberg's death, he was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.