Keystone · PD-US

Trained generations of American actors — Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman among them — as director of the Actors Studio from 1951, teaching a version of Stanislavski's system that became known simply as the Method. Born Israel Strassberg in Budzanów and brought to the United States as a child in 1909, he had earlier co-founded the influential Group Theatre in 1931 with Harold Clurman and Cheryl Crawford. He is widely credited as the father of method acting in America.