Sonia Moore
Sofia Ezarovna Shatsova Helfand, known as Sonia Moore, was a Russian-born American actress, writer and acting teacher. She is known for simplifying Stanislavski's system of acting devised by Konstantin Stanislavski. Moore was a student of Yevgeny Vakhtangov, and later became an acting teacher, founding her own school in New York City, the Sonia Moore Studio of the Theatre, in 1961.
Early life
Sofia Ezarovna Shatsova was born in Gomel, Russian Empire in 1902, into a Jewish family. She went to the Moscow Art Theatre School's Third Studio to study acting under Russian theatre practitioner Yevgeny Vakhtangov in 1920. She married Soviet diplomat Lev Borisovich Helfand in Paris in 1926. They had a daughter, Irene, born in Paris, France, in 1928. In 1940, she and her husband defected from his posting in Italy to the United States, fearing Stalin's purges if he were to return to Moscow. They adopted the surname Moore, and she became Sonia Moore.After her husband's death in 1957, Sonia decided to open a school of acting to bring the updated and revised teachings of Stanislavski to America. In 1961, she founded the Sonia Moore Studio of the Theatre in New York City.