Mikhail Aleksandrovich Chekhov (Russian: Михаил Александрович Чехов; 16 August 1891 – 30 September 1955), better known as Michael Chekhov, was a Russian-American actor, director, author, and theatre practitioner. He was a nephew of the playwright Anton Chekhov and a student of Konstantin Stanislavski. Stanislavski referred to him as his most brilliant student.
Although mainly a stage actor, he made a few notable appearances on film, perhaps most memorably as the Freudian analyst in Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945), for which he received his only Academy Award nomination.
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Life and career
Early years
Mikhail Aleksandrovich Chekhov was born on 16 August 1891 in Saint Petersburg, the son of Alexander Chekhov (the elder brother of Anton Chekhov) and his wife Natalya Aleksandrovna Golden. It was his father's second marriage. His mother, a Russian Jew, had been the governess to the children from his father's first marriage. He was raised in a middle-class family; his father was in the Imperial Customs Service and was a moderately successful writer. In 1901, Michael began his secondary education, and from 1903, he began acting in amateur productions while staying at his family's cottage. He left school in 1910 to become a member of the Maly Theatre in Moscow.
