Stella Adler reading a very young Mark Ruffalo and teaching us how to be a Queen

You don't act with words!

Did she teach the cartoon building at the beginning to act, because his performance was pretty one note.

Also, they thought to include Melanie Griffith in the credits like she was one of her students, and I wouldn't want to admit that I tried to teach Melanie acting.

Acting is music and fire!

I dated one of her acolytes back in the '70s. He was her assistant while in school and afterwards. I can't count the number of conversations we had in which his cadences, his language, his patterns were exactly like what I heard in that video. I went to a few classes. I learned to speak that way, too, like an Adlerite, in which words don't matter. What's important is what you want, what is getting in your way of getting what you want, and what you do about those obstacles. The words are just part of the expression of, of what you want in your life.

This leads to cutthroatism a lot of the time, all this thinking about what you want. But it is a way of understanding what it means to live, and we are all here to live.

Does anyone recognize the actor playing Chris in "All My Sons," @ 46:27?

Mark Ruffalo (starts somewhere in the 5:00 -6:00 min mark) looked good even with that awful moustache!

He has such a great fucking blend of several unique facial features, an endearingly whiny voice, a sexy body o' fur, and a confident (but not cocky) swagger.

He was just born to be hot.

R5 I want to know, too. So hot.

r5 r7 James DePaiva is listed in the end credits. Could it be him?

After the mention of Melanie and the first awful acting excerpt, I had no interest to waste my time. Sorry, but teachers can be as overrated as much as their pupils. Strasberg, Adler ... Brando would do just fine without the mumbling imposed by the method.

The only reason she goes full ham on Ruffalo is because he got a laugh and that took attention away from HER HER HER. I know people love a show-off but I found it pathetic.

Uta Hagen gave an EXCELLENT class and was much more subdued.

Part 2 of Uta.

Stella did not teach "the method."

It's not the 'word's R13 but the meaning....

I accept your apology, young Ruffalo...now go and get me a ham sandwich. With extra mayo!!!

Bring your cock to me, Mr. Ruffalo.

I’ll hear your apology in my dressing room. Mr. Ruffalo. And remember, it’s not the words I’ll be listening for!!

Insufferable. So much neediness.

Whose, R18?

Informative. Thanks, OP.

Never mind Griffith. She's certainly more talented than Cybill Shepherd, Lauren Hutton, and a few others pictured. Candice Bergen? It took some time before she became competent.

Oh, and words DO matter. But she, Strasberg and others were rebelling against the acting styles of the times and could go too far in the other direction.

Adler loathed Strasberg, and with good reason.

Any relation to me?

She was an advocate of the Stravinski method. I always thought Nina Hagen was a better teacher, more subtle.

Uta Hagen, R23.

This is Nina Hagen.

Also, R23, it's Stanislavsky.

Stravinsky was a composer.

Strasberg's Method was a bastardization of Stanislavsky, but then Adler had her own interpretation of Stanislavsky.

She'd drive me straight out into the open.

Stella was gorgeous in her film work. She definitely had "it".

I studied with Uta Hagen. Her method was all about being busy onstage. If you were in a scene and weren't doing something, you were considered a poor actor. They had some lousy actors who had no inner life, but as long as they were doing something, they were brilliant.

And I watched that video upthread. It has Lindsey Crouse (daughter of writer of The Sound of Music and others) hamming it up and Uta doesn't call her on the bad acting because she's from a showbiz family.

Melanie Griffith took Stella's class for a very short time. She has stated that Stella scared her to death.

Stella yelled at her in class and that was the end of that. She left.

The producers of that American Masters segment probably should just have never mentioned Griffith.

Poor r24 and r25. Not bad girls. Just never in on the joke.

Stella does hard-boiled.....

I cut Mark Ruffalo's hair working on Christopher St. in the West Village years ago. ('02) I didn't realize until about halfway through the haircut who he was, but he had that sheen of a celebrity and a solemn stare even back then that took your breath away, very hot guy.

Looks like Stella had her nose "bobbed" back in Hollywood.

Adorable

More of Stella's perfection and brilliance.

She convinced me not to go into any sort of dramatic career. I didn't want it badly enough to make it. At the time, she was right.

She certainly embodies creativity, uniqueness, nerve, and talent.

The guy I knew who worked for her was obsessed with me. He lied to me to try and get me to love him, telling me he had leukemia, and only a year to live, so wouldn't I please spend it with him. I found out the truth from one of his other victims (I met two of them). I thought of him ever after as The Worst Person in the World, but I could never completely separate him from that parsing of dramatic situations Stella teaches.

Girl, Ms. Stella did not play.

"You don't act with words - or this or that!"

Awake and dream!

R32 - omg such a beaut!

Dahling!

Perfection

Yowza