Biography

Robert Lewis was one of the original members of the Group Theatre in the 1930s and co-founder of the Actors Studio in 1947. He was active as a character actor in Hollywood for only a brief period, under contract first to Fox Studios and then MGM. Though he went on to appear in and direct Hollywood musicals, Lewis preferred the stage, eventually becoming one of the most respected directors of Broadway plays. His greatest legacy, however, may be the role he played as one of the foremost proponents and teachers of the Stanislavski Sytem of acting, or the "Method", as it came to be known in America.

In the first year of teaching at The Actors Studio, his group, which met three times a week, consisted of Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, Maureen Stapleton, Eli Wallach, Mildred Dunnock, Jerome Robbins, Herbert Berghof, Tom Ewell, John Forsyth, Anne Jackson, Sidney Lumet, Kevin McCarthy, Karl Malden, E.G. Marshall, Patricia Neal, Beatrice Straight, and David Wayne, to name a few.

In the 1970s, Lewis was the Head of the Acting and Directing Departments at The Yale School of Drama. He was inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame in 1991.
- IMDb mini biography by: okmores@mac.com

One of the founders of the Actors' Studio, he eventually became highly critical of the "Method" because, according to Lewis, and contrary to the teachings of the great Konstantin Stanislavski (founder of "Method" acting), it came to emphasize raw emotion at the expense of basic acting techniques such as clear enunciation and, by doing this, discouraged many otherwise excellent actors from ever playing the classic authors such as William Shakespeare and Molière.

Broadway director and famed acting teacher who made a few films.

Like Stella Adler, he also broke with Lee Strasberg on the Stanislavski system, believing actors should develop imagination rather than use his own memory. His book "Method or Madness" comes to clarify the differences between Strasberg's method and the original Stanislavski System.