Richard Brestoff

Richard Brestoff is professor of drama at UC Irvine, where he teaches in both the graduate and undergraduate acting programs. His courses include personalization—focused on expanding the actor’s expressive range—scene study, acting for the camera, and professional preparation. He has also directed UCI’s M.F.A. actor showcases in New York and Los Angeles.

A professional actor, Brestoff has appeared in more than a dozen feature films and over 30 network television shows, including My Favorite Year, The Entity, and The Fugitive. In 1991, he appeared on the Emmy ballot for his guest-starring role on thirtysomething. His stage credits include Broadway, off-Broadway, regional theater, radio, and Shakespeare, including Hamlet for Joseph Papp’s New York Shakespeare Festival. At UCI, he performed the role of Shylock in The Merchant of Venice (2012) in the New Swan Shakespeare Theater, earning a Falstaff Award nomination for Best Performance, Male, alongside actors such as Kevin Spacey. Other notable performances include Gloucester in King Lear (2013) and Robert in Proof at the Long Beach Playhouse (2007).

Brestoff is the author of six books on acting, most recently Thinking in Character, or Knocking on Hamlet’s Door (Smith & Kraus, 2018). His other works include The Camera Smart Actor, The Great Acting Teachers and Their Methods (volumes 1 and 2), Acting Under the Circumstance, and The Actor’s Wheel of Connection. His writing explores methods for embodying character, from Realism to Shakespeare, and provides practical tools for actors to transform into their roles while remaining grounded in themselves.

He holds an M.F.A. in acting from New York University’s School of the Arts and is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of California, Berkeley’s Department of Dramatic Art. His teachers include Peter Kass, Olympia Dukakis, Joseph Chaikin, and Kristin Linklater. His professional affiliations include SAG-AFTRA, Actors’ Equity, and the Performers Branch of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, where he serves as a Primetime Emmy judge.

Brestoff also appeared as an on-camera expert in the documentary Great American Masters of American Acting Training: Lee Strasberg and Stella Adler (2008).