"Satirists have long delighted in deriding 'method acting,' which teaches that an actor should try to 'become' his character.  That is, try to think, feel and respond as the character would. Nevertheless, Lee Strasberg's The Actors Studio has produced such celebrated actors as Al Pacino, Rod Steiger and Robert De Niro.  Strasberg himself, after an absence of over thirty years from acting, rendered an extremely good and convincing performance as Hyman Roth in The Godfather, Part II.

"Many of the writers I admire most, Shakespeare, Puzo, Graves and Wouk, to name a few salient examples, all seemed to have that rare gift of being able to fully understand another person, regardless how alien the character's nature might be to that of the writer's.  I often wondered if such an apparent gift is simply a talent natural to such people from early childhood, or rather whether anyone can train himself or herself through some form of 'method writing' to do likewise."

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