Stella Adler

One of America's most influential acting teachers, and one of few Americans to have studied the "Method" with its originator, Constantin Stanislavsky; Adler's former students include Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro, Warren Beatty and Harvey Keitel. Adler began her career with the theater company of her father, the legendary Yiddish actor Jacob Adler, before appearing on Broadway and later joining the Group Theater at its inception in 1931. Her most famous performance was in the Group Theater's production of Clifford Odets' "Awake and Sing" in the 1930s. By the mid-40s, after a schism with Lee Strasberg over his interpretation of the Stanislavsky method, she turned to teaching, first at the Dramatic Workshop of the New School for Social Research in New York and, in 1949, full-time at her own school.