Stella Adler, 91, Renowned Actress And Acting Teacher

LOS ANGELES - Actress and acting teacher Stella Adler, who trained such Hollywood greats as Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro, died in her sleep today of heart failure. She was 91.

Miss Adler died at home about 5 a.m., said Irene Gilbert, director of the Stella Adler Conservatory in Hollywood. Miss Adler hadn't been ill. She had been participating in the conservatory, which also has a branch in New York, up to her death.

Funeral arrangements were being planned in New York.

The daughter of an acting family, Miss Adler first appeared on stage at age 4.

She became prominent in the 1930s as a member of the Group Theater, an experimental theater company.

The Group Theater was heavily influenced by the acting theories of Konstantin Stanislavsky. She drew upon those when she began teaching acting in the 1940s.

"The teacher has to inspire. The teacher has to agitate," Miss Adler said in 1984. "You cannot teach acting. You can only stimulate what's there."

She pressed her students to create characters by closely studying the text of the play and its historical context, rather than merely drawing on their own experiences.

"Stella Adler said, `The analysis of the text is the education of the actor,' " one of her students, noted film actor Harvey Keitel, said in an Associated Press interview a year ago. "For me that's what the work is about - educating myself, knowing, to know."

Miss Adler also directed several New York productions, and appeared in a few films, including "Shadow of the Thin Man."

Her parents, Jacob and Sara Adler, were leading actors on the Yiddish stage. Her brothers Luther and Jay Adler also went on to be successful actors. She was survived by her daughter, Ellen, and two grandchildren.