The Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute (originally the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute) is an acting school founded in 1969 by actor, director, and acting teacher Lee Strasberg. The Institute is located in Union Square on East 15th Street, also known as Lee Strasberg Way, in New York City, New York. The school has a secondary campus located in Los Angeles, California. For more than 40 years, the Institute has held a partnership with New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, where students can earn a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. The Los Angeles campus also holds an Associate of Occupational Studies degree program. Until her January 2024 death, the Institute was under the artistic direction of Anna Strasberg, Lee Strasberg's widow. Students at the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute learn method acting, an acting technique created and developed by Strasberg.

History

In 1931, Lee Strasberg co-founded the Group Theatre, hailed as "America's first true theatrical collective," alongside fellow directors Harold Clurman and Cheryl Crawford. In 1951, he became director of the Actors Studio in New York City, considered "the nation's most prestigious acting school," and, in 1966, he was involved in the foundation of the Actors Studio West in Los Angeles. After almost five decades of teaching private classes and shepherding generations of actors toward success at the Actors Studio, Strasberg established his own school in 1969, open to all those interested in learning The Method. Years later, a gift from his wife Anna Strasberg established the permanent homes of the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institutes in both New York and Los Angeles.

Anna Strasberg

Anna Strasberg (April 16, 1939 – January 6, 2024), also known as Anna Mazraki, was a Venezuelan-born American actress and former artistic director of the institute. In 1968, she married Lee Strasberg. Thanks to the will of Marilyn Monroe, of whom her predecessor Paula Strasberg was an acting coach together with her husband Lee, she inherited after Lee's death and took take care of the Marilyn Monroe Theater and the Marilyn Monroe Museum (at first it was a room of the Lee Strasberg Theater and Film Institute, which he personally curated). She had among her students Michel Altieri. Strasberg acted in some cinema and television films in the 1960s, and again in the 1980s. She died in New York on January 6, 2024, at the age of 84.

Film roles

Notable alumni