For decades, in one small room on West Forty-fourth Street in Manhattan, Lee Strasberg ran the Actors Studio, where dozens of acclaimed actors absorbed a technique that became known as the "Method." Based on firsthand observations and numerous interviews, Hirsch's examination of the Studio's origins reveals how its graduates forever shaped the American stage and screen. A new introduction by the author studies the Actors Studio in the twenty-first century and places it in a modern context.

Foster Hirsch, a professor of Film at Brooklyn College, is the author of sixteen books on film and theater, including Detours and Lost Highways: A Map of Neo-Noir; Love, Sex, Death, and the Meaning of Life: The Films of Woody Allen; and Otto Preminger: The Man Who Would Be King. He lives in New York.