Stella Adler was one of the great personalities of the 20th century. She is likely the most important acting teacher in American history. She began as a student of the famous Russian teacher Konstantin Stanislavski. Influenced by her long career in New York and Hollywood, and after training generations of later famous stage and film actors, she began to develop her own style. She taught her students more than just the tricks and techniques of the stage and film. One of her key principles was that it is not possible to become an actor before one has truly become a human being. Her voice fell silent at the beginning of the 1990s, but her decades of experience and her unique pedagogy have been excellently captured by Howard Kissel in the 22 lessons of this book.