Lee Strasberg - Legacy

Legacy

"Whether directly influenced by Strasberg or not", wrote acting author Pamela Wojcik, "the new male stars all to some degree or other adapted Method techniques to support their identification as rebels... He recreates romance as a drama of male neuroticism and also invests his characterization 'with an unprecedented aura of verisimilitude'." Acting teacher and author Alison Hodge explains: "Seemingly spontaneous, intuitive, brooding, 'private', lit with potent vibrations from an inner life of conflict and contradiction, their work exemplified the style of heightened naturalism which (whether Brando agrees or not) Lee Strasberg devoted his life to exploring and promoting."

Pamela Wojcik adds:

Because of their tendency to substitute their personal feelings for those of the characters they were playing, Actors Studio performers were well suited to become Hollywood stars.... In short, Lee Strasberg transformed a socialistic, egalitarian theory of acting into a celebrity-making machine.... It does not matter who 'invented' Marlon Brando or how regularly or faithfully he, Dean, or Clift attended the Studio or studied the Method at the feet of Lee Strasberg. In their signature roles – the most influential performances in the history of American films – these three performers revealed new kinds of body language and new ways of delivering dialogue. In the pauses between words, in the language 'spoken' by their eyes and faces, they gave psychological realism an unprecedented charge. Verbally inarticulate, they were eloquent 'speakers' of emotion. Far less protective of their masculinity than earlier film actors, they enacted emotionally wounded and vulnerable outsiders struggling for self-understanding, and their work shimmered with a mercurial neuroticism... he Method-trained performers in films of the fifties added an enhanced verbal and gesture naturalism and a more vivid inner life.