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Eric Morris (born November 19, 1931) is an American actor, acting teacher and author who developed his own theory of acting based on the works of Lee Strasberg and Martin Landau. Morris created the Eric Morris System of Acting, which provides actors with concrete techniques to explore their own psychology as the underlying source of their challenges.
Morris's parents were Russian Immigrants. His father emigrated from Russia to the United States in 1912. Morris lived with his family in various apartments in a neighborhood inhabited chiefly by Jewish immigrants from Russia or Poland until he was in seventh grade, when his father bought a house.
He spent some years as a Boy Scout, attaining the rank of Star Scout. He was a soda jerk at Walgreens, and at age fourteen spent some Saturdays doing stand-up comedy at a mafia nightclub. After a false start and a detour in therapy, Morris returned to Wright Junior College in 1950 and took up drama. He enrolled at Northwestern University School of Speech in 1952, as a junior theater major. Alvina Krause taught him acting, though he reports she did not like him; he earned a "C" in the class. In 1978 he bought a house at Lake Arrowhead, fulfilling a wish he had made as a ten-year-old in 1941.[1]
Having published over six books in his theory, Morris claims that his System is derived partly from Lee Strasberg's Method Acting. However, Strasberg's Method focuses too much on craft, according to Morris, and not enough on the actor's instrument. Facing struggle in finding truth, he contemplated his theory while heading the Directors Unit at the Actor's Studio in Los Angeles. Morris's method recognizes the fact that actors have emotional blocks, tension, insecurities and other preventions to achieving a fundamental state of being, and works to clear these blocks, rendering the actor truly organic. In this sense, Morris stresses that acting is essentially living and being.
There are seven major obligations to material, according to Morris: Time and Place, Relationship, Emotional Obligation, Character Obligation, Historic Obligation, Thematic Obligation and Subtextual Obligation. After recognizing these seven obligations, there are the choices the actor utilizes to render these emotions, and finally the approach to which the actors use these choices.
The Eric Morris System has received praise from such actors as Jack Nicholson and Johnny Depp.
モリスは1949年から俳優として活動しており、1954年から全米映画俳優組合（SAG）の創設メンバーです。グローブ座やシカゴ・レパートリー・シアターなど、全米各地の劇場で100本以上の舞台に出演してきました。また、『ローマン』、『デイズ・オブ・アワ・ライブス』、 『ホーガンズ・ヒーローズ』、『ニュー・フィル・シルバース・ショー』、『フェーム』など、数々のテレビ番組にも出演しています。さらに、 『ポーク・チョップ・ヒル』、『バトル・ビヨンド・ザ・スターズ』 、『ミラージュ』など、25本以上の長編映画にも出演しています。
2. ラシュトン、スージー。（2008年1月18日）。ジョニー・デップ：『スウィーニー・トッド』での彼の演技は「あらゆる面で素晴らしい」と絶賛されている。インディペンデント紙。2024年2月14日取得。出典：https: //www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/johnny-depp-his-performance-in-sweeney-todd-has-been-acclaimed-as-stunning-in-every-dimension-771211.html