New York-bred Ed Kovens became a professional actor at 19 after acting and directing in high school and college. "I quit art school and went to NYU at night and studied acting and directing. In six months I truly thought I was trained and went out and got work. The next four years I worked as a stand-up comic, did small parts and extra work in film and TV (mainly because of my age); directed some plays and reviews and did some Off-Off-Broadway leads. The fifth year I stopped working. That plus a general dissatisfaction with my own work led me to start studying again.

Until then, I was an intuitive actor. If inspiration came I was fine, if it came! I knew when I was good but couldn't repeat it; I knew when I was bad but didn't know how to improve it.

In 1957, I started studying with Lee Strasberg in a small studio above the Capitol Theater, then at Carnegie Hall, and subsequently, at the Actor's Studio (where I became a member in 1968) until his death in 1981.

In 1965, a bunch of Strasberg students asked me to form an exercise class - his classes were packed, they wanted to work, and they felt I had some expertise. Some major stars now, who were Strasberg's students then, were in that group. In 1969, I became a founding staff member of the Lee Strasberg Institute. I have augmented my acting career with teaching ever since. In 1974, I left the Strasberg Institute and formed my own classes,

I've taught some major stars (we all have) whose names the reader can discover on my website. I must say, however, I am prouder of the students I've trained who have not yet, if indeed ever, attained stardom. They are working and making a living in a business they also enjoy, making them/us more fortunate than most of the people in the world.

I would like to clarify something. Stanislavski did not invent some new technique. It did not spring out, like Minerva from the head of Zeus. He simply formulated the things that good actors had been doing for centuries. At the same time, the theories of Pavlov, Freud and Skinner were also developing. Strasberg was taught those techniques at the Actor's Lab by Ouspenskya and Boleslavsky. He then, rightly so, adopted and adapted these theories.

I have tried to stay as close to Strasbergs teachings as he did to his teachers. It worked for me and hundreds if not thousands of actors in the U.S. and Europe, so why fool with it. After all, when I taught at the Institute, people wanted the Strasberg method, not the Kovens method - who the hell is he? The "changes" I've made have been more evolutionary than revolutionary and have come about through my own work as an actor using the method, as well as the interspersion of new discoveries in behaviorism, psychology, kinetics, etc., as in the work of Lowen, Lorentz, etc. (whose books Strasberg introduced me to). His own work slowly evolved to those theories of Vachtangov, a protege of Stanislavski.

The acting student today is being taken advantage of by many so-called "teachers" who neither have accredited training (i.e. collage, other acting schools) or have acted or directed. What they teach is opinion - theirs. You do a scene, they criticize. On top of that, there's the carrot - they are casting directors or agents and the hidden promise is, study with me and I'll give you work'. So what's the damage? Besides the basic dishonesty, they take money away from young actors that they would use to study with legitimate teachers and learn a craft.