Jack Garfein, a director, producer and teacher connected with the famous Actors’ Studio, has had a fascinating life history. He was born in 1930 in Mukacevo, Carpathian Ruthenia, Czechoslovakia, now Mukacheve, Ukraine. In 1946, he was among the first five Holocaust survivors to arrive in the United States. His dream was to become an actor. He took classes in acting at the Dramatic Workshop of The New School in New York with the influential German director Erwin Piscator who employed fantastic teachers such as Stella Adler, Lee Strasberg and Herbert Berghof, who would later on start their own schools and in the coming 50 years were to impose their acting style in America and the rest of the world. Garfein as a director and acting teacher actively contributed to the development of The Actors’ Studio and worked with famous film-makers such as: Elia Kazan, John Ford and George Stevens. A teacher to Sissy Spacek, Ron Perlman, Irène Jacob, Laetitia Casta, he discovered Bruce Dern, Ben Gazzara, Steve McQueen and George Peppard. He also gave his first role to James Dean in the Actors Studio production of End as a Man. In 1966, he, in collaboration with Paul Newman created the second branch of the Actors' Studio in Los Angeles. Garfein was also one of the co-founders of Hollywood Theatre Row, where in 1974 he created the Harold Clurman Theater and later the Samuel Becket Theatre. He is one of the most experienced teachers, followers of Stanislavski’s method, which he has used in his teaching work over a period of 40 years.