Mikhail Aleksandrovich Chekhov (; 29 August 1891 – 30 September 1955), known as Michael Chekhov, was an American actor, director, author and theatre practitioner. He was a nephew of the playwright Anton Chekhov and a student of Konstantin Stanislavski. Stanislavski referred to him as his most brilliant student. Although mainly a stage actor, he made a few notable appearances on film, perhaps most memorably as the Freudian analyst in Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945), for which he received his only Academy Award nomination. Life He was born in Saint Petersburg, the son of Alexander Chekhov (the elder brother of Anton Chekhov) and his wife Natalya Aleksandrovna Golden. It was his father's second marriage. His mother, a Russian Jew, had been the governess to the children from his father's first marriage. He was raised in a middle-class family; his father was in the Imperial Customs Service and was a moderately successful writer. Chekhov's first wife was actress Olga Chekhova, whom he met at the Moscow Art Theatre First Studio. Olga Chekhova was a daughter of Konstantin Knipper and was the niece of Olga Knipper, Anton Chekhov's wife, after whom she was named. Their daughter, also baptized Olga, was born in 1916 and became a German actress under the name Ada Tschechowa. His second wife was Xenia Karlovna Ziller, of German origins. Chekhov studied under the Russian theatre practitioner Konstantin Stanislavski at the First Studio, where he acted, directed, and studied Stanislavski's 'system'. He was also influenced in his creative development as an actor by Yevgeny Vakhtangov and Leopold Sulerzhitsky. In 1922, after the death of Vakhtangov, Chekhov became director of the First Studio, which was subsequently renamed Moscow Art Theatre II. Stanislavski considered Chekhov to be one of his brightest students. When Chekhov experimented with affective memory and had a nervous breakdown, this aided Stanislavski in seeing the limitations of his early concepts of emotional memory. After the October Revolution, Chekhov split with Stanislavski and toured with his own company. He thought that Stanislavski's techniques led too readily to a naturalistic style of performance. He demonstrated his own theories acting in parts such as Senator Ableukhov in the stage version of Andrei Bely's Petersburg. With the beginning of Stalinism in 1927, Chekov came into conflict with the Communist regime and was threatened to be arrested, especially for his spiritualist interests. In the late 1920s, Chekhov emigrated to Germany and set up his