The lights of Hollywood had begun to feel like heat lamps, drying out her soul. In 1955, she made a radical break, moving to New York City to enroll at the Actors Studio under the guidance of Lee Strasberg. In the dim, dusty rooms of the studio, she was finally permitted to shed the "bombshell" persona that had become a gilded cage.
Here, she wasn't the image on the subway grate; she was an apprentice, a student searching for the raw nerves of truth. She found a strange, desperate peace in the discipline of the craft, surrounded by intellectuals and artists who valued her mind more than her silhouette. It was an attempt to reclaim the woman she had been before the world decided who she was supposed to be.