Over the course of his career, Jeff Corey (1914-2002) educated movie, television, and theater stars from James Dean to Jane Fonda in the art of acting. Though he worked with some of the most famous talents of his day, one of Corey's greatest pleasures was teaching regular people - accountants, schoolteachers, and lawyers - who had a secret desire to act. In his eyes, anyone could nurture his or her innate "mimetic impulse." Jack Nicholason, one of Corey's most famous students, said, "Acting is life study, and Corey's classes got me into looking at life as an artist." In Improvising Out Loud: My Life Teaching Hollywood How to Act, Jeff Corey narrates his life story first as a successful young actor in Hollywood and later as one of the industry's most revered acting instructors. Corey made a name for himself as a strong character actor in films like The Killers (1946), Home of the Brave (1951). However, everything changed in 1951, when he was summoned before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Corey refused to name names before the committee and was promptly blacklisted, forcing him to walk away from his vibrant career as an actor. Later that year, Corey began work as an acting teacher in a small studio, and almost overnight, he became one of the most sought-after instructors in Hollywood, with students such as Kirk Douglas, Rob Reiner, and Tony Perkins. In 1962, when the blacklist ended, Corey was one of the industry's first trailblazers to seamlessly reboot his acting career and he secured roles in some of the classic films of the era, including Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), True Grit (1969), and Little Big Man (1970), in which he starred as the legendary Wild Bill Hickok. The major action of Corey's life was to capture the human heart: in conflict, in terror, in love, and in all of its small triumphs. His memoir, which he wrote with his daughter Emily Corey, provides a unique and personal perspective of the man whose teaching inspired some of Hollywood's biggest names to excel in the roles that made them famous--Dust jacket