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Method acting
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=== United States === In the United States, the transmission of the earliest phase of Stanislavski's work via the students of the First Studio of the [[Moscow Art Theatre]] (MAT) revolutionized acting in the [[Western culture|West]].<ref>Carnicke (1998, 1, 167) and (2000, 14), Counsell (1996, 24–25), Golub (1998, 1032), Gordon (2006, 71–72), Leach (2004, 29), and Milling and Ley (2001, 1–2).</ref> When the MAT toured the US in the early 1920s, [[Richard Boleslawski]], one of Stanislavski's students from the First Studio, presented a series of lectures on the "system" that were eventually published as ''Acting: The First Six Lessons'' (1933). The interest generated led to a decision by Boleslawski and [[Maria Ouspenskaya]] (another student at the First Studio who later became an acting teacher)<ref>{{Cite web|date=2019-06-16|title=What are Animal Exercises?|url=https://actingmagazine.com/2019/06/what-are-animal-exercises/|access-date=2021-12-18|website=Acting Magazine|language=en}}</ref> to emigrate to the US and to establish the [[American Laboratory Theatre]].<ref>Benedetti (1999a, 283, 286) and Gordon (2006, 71–72).</ref> However, the version of Stanislavski's practice these students took to the US with them was that developed in the 1910s, rather than the more fully elaborated version of the "system" detailed in Stanislavski's acting manuals from the 1930s, ''An Actor's Work'' and ''An Actor's Work on a Role''. The first half of ''An Actor's Work'', which treated the psychological elements of training, was published in a heavily abridged and misleadingly translated version in the US as ''[[An Actor Prepares]]'' in 1936. English-language readers often confused the first volume on psychological processes with the "system" as a whole.<ref name=b332>Benedetti (1999a, 332).</ref> Many of the American practitioners who came to be identified with the Method were taught by Boleslawski and Ouspenskaya at the American Laboratory Theatre.<ref>Krasner (2000b, 129–130).</ref> The approaches to acting subsequently developed by their students—including Lee Strasberg, [[Stella Adler]], and [[Sanford Meisner]]—are often confused with Stanislavski's "system". [[Stella Adler]], an actress and acting teacher whose students included [[Marlon Brando]], [[Warren Beatty]], and [[Robert De Niro]], also broke with Strasberg after she studied with Stanislavski. Her version of the method is based on the idea that actors should stimulate emotional experience by imagining the scene's "given circumstances", rather than recalling experiences from their own lives. Adler's approach also seeks to stimulate the actor's imagination through the use of "as ifs", which substitute more personally affecting imagined situations for the circumstances experienced by the character. [[Alfred Hitchcock]] described his work with [[Montgomery Clift]] in ''[[I Confess (film)|I Confess]]'' as difficult "because you know, he was a method actor". He recalled similar problems with Paul Newman in ''[[Torn Curtain]]''.<ref>Abramson (2015, 135).</ref> [[Lillian Gish]] quipped: "It's ridiculous. How would you portray death if you had to experience it first?"<ref>Flom (2009, 241).</ref> [[Charles Laughton]], who worked closely for a time with [[Bertolt Brecht]], argued that "Method actors give you a photograph", while "real actors give you an oil painting."<ref>French (2008).</ref> During the filming of ''[[Marathon Man (film)|Marathon Man]]'' (1976), [[Laurence Olivier]], who had lost patience with Method acting two decades earlier while filming ''[[The Prince and the Showgirl]]'' (1957), was said to have quipped to Dustin Hoffman, after Hoffman stayed up all night to match his character's situation, that Hoffman should "try acting ... It's so much easier."<ref>{{cite news|quote=The American actor Dustin Hoffman, playing a victim of imprisonment and torture in the film The Marathon Man, prepared himself for his role by keeping himself awake for two days and nights. He arrived at the studio disheveled and drawn to be met by his co-star, Laurence Olivier. 'Dear boy, you look absolutely awful,' exclaimed the First Lord of the Theatre. 'Why don't you try acting? It's so much easier.' Never was a grosser untruth spoken in jest. Laurence Kerr Olivier ... would be the last man on earth to regard his chosen profession as easy.|date=17 May 1982|page=8|newspaper=[[The Times]]|title=The Times Profile: Laurence Olivier at Seventy-Five|first=Alan|last=Hamilton}}</ref> In an interview on ''[[Inside the Actors Studio]]'', Hoffman said that this story had been distorted: he had been up all night at a nightclub for personal rather than professional reasons and Olivier, who understood this, was joking.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Dillon |first1=George |title=Dustin Hoffman discusses the Laurence Olivier story |url=https://georgedillon.com/workshops/video-links/dustin-hoffman-discusses-the-laurence-olivier-story/ |access-date=24 July 2022}}</ref> Strasberg's students included many prominent American actors of the latter half of the 20th century, including [[Paul Newman]], [[Al Pacino]], [[George Peppard]], [[Dustin Hoffman]], [[James Dean]], [[Marilyn Monroe]], [[Jane Fonda]], [[Jack Nicholson]], and [[Mickey Rourke]].<ref>Gussow (1982).</ref>
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