Milton Katselas, an iconoclastic acting teacher whose 30 years in Hollywood raised him to guru status in the eyes of hundreds of actors, many of them famous, died in Los Angeles on Oct. 24. He was 75 and lived in Los Angeles.

The cause was a heart attack, said Gary Grossman, the producing director of the Beverly Hills Playhouse, the acting school founded by Mr. Katselas in 1978.

Unlike the methodologists — Stanislavski, Adler, Strasberg — Mr. Katselas was a pragmatist who declared himself open to any and all acting theories if they got results. And he was a realist who wanted audience members to recognize the humanity of the people they saw being portrayed.