The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act

by Isaac Butler

“Marlon was never an active student of the Studio,” said Martin Balsam. “He went out the way he came in; that was his style.” Strasberg, however, was happy to claim Marlon Brando, the Greatest Actor Alive, as a lifetime member of the Studio. Brando never forgave him for it. He would later say that Strasberg “took credit for everything. He was a tasteless man. I didn’t like him very much at all … and he never taught me acting. Stella did. And Kazan.” Other Studio members mistrusted Strasberg but got swept up into the Method lineage. Karl Malden, who had hated working with Strasberg on Peer Gynt, later wrote, “Because I was around on the ground floor of the Actors Studio, people might assume that I would call myself a Method actor. But I don’t. I do have a method, of course. That is, any method that works.”