[3] Later in life she taught part time in Los Angeles, with the assistance of her protégée, actress Joanne Linville,[4] who continued to teach Adler's technique.

[8] Adler began her acting career at the age of four in the play Broken Hearts at the Grand Street Theatre on the Lower East Side, as a part of her parents' Independent Yiddish Art Company.

She made her London debut, at the age of 18, as Naomi in Elisa Ben Avia with her father's company, in which she appeared for a year before returning to New York.

[citation needed] Adler made her English-language debut on Broadway in 1922 as the Butterfly in The World We Live In, and she spent a season in the vaudeville circuit.

[7] She joined the American Laboratory Theatre in 1925; there, she was introduced to Stanislavski's theories, from founders and Russian actor-teachers and former members of the Moscow Art Theater—Richard Boleslavsky and Maria Ouspenskaya.

Members of Group Theatre were leading interpreters of the method acting technique based on the work and writings of Stanislavski.

In the following years, she taught Marlon Brando, Steve McQueen, Dolores del Río, Robert De Niro, Elaine Stritch, Martin Sheen, Manu Tupou, Harvey Keitel, Melanie Griffith, Peter Bogdanovich, and Warren Beatty, among others, the principles of characterization and script analysis.

For many years, Adler led the undergraduate drama department at New York University,[5][14] and became one of America's leading acting teachers.

She also understood that 50% of the actor's job is internal (imagination, emotion, action, will) and 50% is externals (characterization, way of walking, voice, face).

She believed that mastery of the physical and vocal aspects of acting was necessary for the actor to command the stage, and that all body language should be carefully crafted and voices need to be clear and expressive.

Her biggest mantra was perhaps "in your choices lies your talent", and she encouraged actors to find the most grand character interpretation possible in a scene; another favorite phrase of hers regarding this was "don't be boring".

[18] Adler married three times: first to Horace Eliascheff—the father of her only child, Ellen—from 1923 to 1930;[19][20] then from 1942 until 1959 to director and critic Harold Clurman, one of the founders of the Group Theatre.

[2] Adler's technique, based on a balanced and pragmatic combination of imagination and memory, is hugely credited with introducing the subtle and insightful details and a deep physical embodiment of a character.

[30] In 2004, the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin acquired Adler's complete archive along with a small collection of her papers from her former husband Harold Clurman.

The archive traces her career from her start in the New York Yiddish Theater District to her encounters with Stanislavski and the Group Theatre to her lectures at the Stella Adler Studio of Acting.

[33] Adler is a character in Names, Mark Kemble's play about former Group Theatre members' struggles with the House Un-American Activities Committee.

[34] Irene Gilbert, a longtime protégée and friend, ran the Stella Adler Studio of Acting in Los Angeles until her death.