LOS ANGELES — Marlon Brando. Sidney Poitier. Ellen Burstyn. These are a few of the long list of acting luminaries to have come through the famed Actor’s Studio. Five years ago, Béchir Sylvain saw his name added to that impressive lineage.
“There are so many people that I admire and love in this craft, that it was almost impossible for me not to want to be part of it,” he said. “You get to be in a master class within your own self and within your own peers. And all the peers are so incredible.”
It took Sylvain two years to get admitted into the Actors Studio and now that he’s in, he’ll sometimes take a minute to just read the names engraved on small plaques screwed into the arms of the chairs. Al Pacino. Lee Strasberg. And his favorite, Martin Landau, right in the front row.
It was Landau who inducted him into the studio. Standing on the stage in a black box theater space located on the estate of William S. Hart in West Hollywood, Sylvain feels a part of something unique and revered.
“I have a connection to Pacino. I have a connection to Christopher Walken. I have a connection to Sidney Poitier. Rest in peace,” he explained. “It’s pretty cool to be able to have that legacy. And more importantly, it’s the work, the type of work.”
That type of work, known as The Method, has been taught at the studio since the day of the first class in October 1947, 20 years before current co-president Ellen Burstyn became a member. The award-winning actress describes The Method as “a method of training the imagination to respond to imaginary stimuli.”
Having been a member and a leader of the institution for so long, she seems frustrated with the amount of misconceptions and misinformation about The Method that was developed by Actors Studio founder Lee Strasberg.
“It’s not by going out and doing the real thing,” she said, “otherwise your children wouldn’t be safe when you played Medea. But it’s using your imagination to bring the reality alive inside of you.”
Burstyn recently appeared at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, which is marking the Actors Studio’s 75th anniversary by screening an Oscar-winning performance by an Actors Studio member every Sunday.
Bernardo Rondeau is the senior director of film programs at the museum’s David Geffen Theater.
“As long as the actor studio has existed, they’ve been winning and getting nominated for acting performances,” Rondeau said. “They’ve inspired so many generations of both film audiences and filmmakers.”
He said the series, which runs every weekend through the end of September, was designed to give audiences “a sense of the range and historical impact of the Actors Studio dating all the way back to Marlon Brando to Bradley Cooper today.”
It’s been 48 years since Burstyn won an Academy Award for “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” and before the screening earlier this month, it had been 48 years since she’d seen the film. She recalled that it was made early in the Women’s Movement and she was determined for the story to be told from a woman’s point of view. She also knew she wanted a new, exciting director at the helm.
“And I was told to look at a film called ‘Mean Streets,’ which I did, directed by a young director named Marty Scorsese,” she remembered. “And I said, ‘Yes, that’s the level of reality.’”
As for whether he could capture a woman’s perspective, Burstyn said she asked him point blank. “I said, ‘Do you know anything about women?’ And he said, ‘Nope, but I’d like to learn.’ And I thought that was a brilliant response.”
Burstyn herself is still learning. Even now in her 90s, she still returns to the Actor’s Studio, which she describes as a gym where actors can train their muscles.
“I do,” she quickly admitted. “If I’m doing a difficult role, I go to the Actor’s Studio and design some kind of exercise to help me find the inner life of the character.”
Longtime board member Barbara Bain, who was inducted into the studio in 1958, agrees.
“Every time you ever get up as an actor, you learn something, and this is a place where the possibilities are endless,” she explained.
But 75 years later, with so many changes to how movies are made and how they are consumed, is The Method still relevant? It’s something Bain has given a lot of thought.
“I asked myself. ‘Are we over with? Is it possible we’re over with? Are we in an antiquated form?’” she said. To find out, she said she went to see what other groups were doing and the work they were producing. “And then I came back and said, ‘No, we’ve got a lot to offer.’”
Katherine Cortez needs no convincing. Now the artistic director, she remembers auditioning at the original New York location with a scene from “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” She was told to try again in a year. In fact, it took her six tries before she was inducted.
“I would still be auditioning if I hadn’t gotten in,” she laughed, telling her story to Sylvain. “I’d still be auditioning, I swear to God.”
She was able to study under Lee Strasberg in his final years and now considers it an honor to be able to pass that direct knowledge on to the next generation of lifetime members, like Sylvain. His talent is exciting, she said, but it’s his passion for the work that thrills her.
“It makes it feel like the thing is gonna go on,” Cortez said. “It matters. And it matters to the younger people. And that is everything to me.”
She said there is nowhere else — anywhere — where membership is free, where the sessions are free, and where actors are free to work on whatever they choose in order to develop their instrument. It’s something Sylvain appreciates immensely. All too often in acting classes, he’d be assigned scenes from August Wilson.
“’Yeah, but, can I try Chekhov?’” he’d ask. “’Can I… can I try Arthur Miller?’ This place allows you to go beyond what everybody pins you in, allows you to… to be as free as you want to be, you know? And you get to work on everything,” he said.
It is exactly what he plans to do until the Actors Studio reaches its 100th anniversary and beyond.
“And hopefully I’ll be in this chair maybe,” he laughed, “you know, telling folks ‘what did you work on?’ Oh, man, definitely — it’s definitely one of my dreams to be part of that.”