Editing Nicholas Ray (section)

=== Acting ===
Like many US theatre practitioners of the 1930s, Ray was strongly influenced by the theories and practices of early-twentieth century Russian dramatists, and the system of actor training that evolved into "[[Method acting]]." Late in life, he told students, "My first orientation to the theatre was more toward [[Vsevolod Meyerhold|Meyerholdt]], then [[Yevgeny Vakhtangov|Vakhtangov]], than [[Konstantin Stanislavski|Stanislavsky]]," citing Vakhtangov's notion of "agitation from the essence"<ref>{{Cite book|last=Vakhtangov|first=Evgeny|title=Acting: A Handbook of the Stanislavski Method|publisher=Crown|year=1955|editor-last=Cole|editor-first=Toby|location=New York|pages=146|chapter=Preparing for the Role}}</ref> as being "a principal guideline for me in my directing career."<ref>Ray, ''I Was Interrupted'', p. 3.</ref> On a few occasions, he was able to work with actors who were so trained, notably James Dean, but as a director working in the Hollywood studio system, most of his performers were trained classically, on stage, or in the studios themselves. Some found Ray agreeable as a director, while others resisted his methods. On ''Born To Be Bad'', for example, Ray started rehearsals with a [[Read-through|table read]], then customary in a stage production but less so for a film, and star Joan Fontaine found the exercise discomfiting, tainting her relationship with the director, whom she thought "not right for this kind of picture." On the same film, [[Joan Leslie]] appreciated Ray's hands-on direction, even though they differed in their interpretation of a scene.<ref>McGilligan, pp. 176–77.</ref> Their co-star, the [[Max Reinhardt|Reinhardt]]-trained Robert Ryan, remembered favourably his second Ray project, ''On Dangerous Ground'': "He directs very little.... Right from the start of our collaboration, he offered me a very few suggestions. ... He never told me what to do. He was never specific about anything at all."<ref>Eisenschitz, p. 156.</ref>