Mikhail Aleksandrovich Chekhov (Russian: Михаил Александрович Чехов, August 29 1891 in Moscow – September 30 1955 in Beverly Hills, California) was an Academy Award-nominated Russian-American actor, director, author, and developer of his own acting technique used by actors such as Clint Eastwood, Marilyn Monroe, Yul Brynner, and Robert Stack.

His father was Aleksandr Pavlovich Chekhov (brother of famed Russian playwright Anton Chekhov) and his mother was Natalya Golden, the eldest of three Jewish sisters. Chekhov was considered by Konstantin Stanislavsky to be one of his brightest students. In 1915, he married Olga Knipper, who would later make a remarkable film career in the Third Reich cinema.

Michael Chekhov was one of a handful of proteges of Stanislavsky who both embraced and rebelled against the theories and practices of Stanislavsky. After the Revolution in Russia, Michael Chekhov had split with Stanislavsky and toured with his own company. He believed Stanislavsky’s techniques led too readily to a naturalistic style. He illustrated his own theories in such stunning parts as Senator Ableukhov in the stage version of Andrei Bely's Petersburg.

In the late 1920s, Chekhov emigrated to the United States and set up his own studio, teaching a physical and imagination based system of acting training. He advocated the establishing of scenes’ atmospheres in order to create the tones of the play, from which the actor could then draw personal inspiration. He also established the use of the “Psychological Gesture”, a concept derived from the Symbolist theories of Bely. In this technique, the actor physicalizes a character’s need or internal dynamic in the form of an external gesture. He then mutes the outward gesture and incorporates it internally, allowing the physical memory to inform the performance on an unconscious level.

1930-1935 he was working in Kaunas State Drama Theatre in Lithuania.

Between 1936 and 1939 Chekhov established The Chekhov Theatre School at Dartington Hall, in Devon, England. Following developments in Germany that threatened the outbreak of war in 1938 his school moved to Connecticut, where it took up residence of an old boarding school, giving its first diplomas in 1939.

Much of what Chekhov explored was the question of how to access the unconscious creative self through indirect non-analytical means. Chekhov also taught a range of movement dynamics such as molding, floating, flying, and radiating which actors could use to find a physical core of a character. His techniques, though seemingly external, were meant to lead the actor to a rich internal life. In spite of his brilliance as an actor and his first hand experience in the development of the Moscow Art Theatre’s groundbreaking work, Chekhov as a teacher was overshadowed by his American counterparts in the 1940s and 1950s and their branching interpretations of Stanislavsky's work.

Modern teachers in New York have extended Chekhov's work with "Archetype Work for Actors" and "Dream Work for Actors."

Chekhov's description of his acting technique, On the Technique of Acting, was published in 1942; an abridged version appeared under the title, To the Actor. The English translation of his autobiography "The Path of the Actor" was edited by Andrei Kirillov and Bella Merlin, and was published by Routledge in 2005, marking the 50th anniversary of his death on 30 September 1955.

* * * * Michael Chekhov Centre UK website * Lisa Dalton's Michael Chekhov Connection website * Teacher Certification and Actor Training