Lee Strasberg

One of America's leading proponents of Method acting. Strasberg arrived in the USA at age nine, co-founded the influential, left-leaning Group Theater in 1930 and became artistic director of the newly formed Actors Studio in 1948. Strasberg and his associates, through their teaching of the Method at the Studio, heavily influenced the course of American screen acting; students included Marlon Brando, Rod Steiger, Marilyn Monroe, Paul Newman and Shelley Winters.

In 1969 he set up the Lee Strasberg Institute, with chapters in Los Angeles and New York. He himself acted in only a handful of films (his first and best part was as a workaday Jewish mobster in 1974's "The Godfather, Part II" for which he received a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination).