Stella Adler dedicated her life to preserving and expanding the highest level of art in the theatre. The youngest daughter of eminent Yiddish tragedians Sara and Jacob Adler, she began her career on her father's stage at the age of four. By eighteen, she was performing in London. By her twenties, she had appeared in over 100 plays across the United States, Europe, and South America.

In 1931, she became a founding member of The Group Theatre — the most influential theatre collective in American history — alongside Harold Clurman, Lee Strasberg, and Sanford Meisner. Her work there, including her celebrated performance as Bessie Berger in Awake and Sing, was so powerful that actors from across New York would sneak into the back of the theatre just to watch her.

In 1934, she took a leave of absence and traveled to Paris, where she studied privately with Konstantin Stanislavski for five weeks. She is the only American actor ever to have trained with him directly. When she returned, she brought back not just his technique — but a fundamentally different understanding of what acting could be.

In 1949, she opened her own conservatory. Her students included Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro, Warren Beatty, Harvey Keitel, and Candice Bergen. In 1985, she co-founded the Los Angeles Academy that bears her name — planting her legacy in the city where most of her students' careers would ultimately live or die: Hollywood.