Michael Chekhov, born Mikhail Aleksandrovich Chekhov (Saint Petersburg, 1891 – Beverly Hills, 1955), was a Russian-American actor, director, and theatre theorist, and the nephew of the celebrated playwright Anton Chekhov. A student of Konstantin Stanislavski at the Moscow Art Theatre, he developed his own acting technique that departed from his teacher's psychological realism, basing it on the "psychological gesture," imagination, and the connection between the inner world and physical expression. After leaving the Soviet Union, he settled in the United States, where he founded his studio and taught future stars such as Marilyn Monroe and Clint Eastwood. His seminal theoretical work is the book *To the Actor*, which remains a key text for actor training today. As a film actor, his career culminated with an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Alfred Hitchcock's *Spellbound* (1945), which remains his most celebrated and internationally recognized performance.