On Saturday and Monday, Hollywood acting teacher and Rhode Island College alumnus Howard Fine returned to campus “to lead a Master Class for a select group of RIC students, alumni and community members.”

When we profiled Howard Fine several years ago, we were surprised at how simple his advise to actors was: Do your homework.

As an example, Fine watched quietly and thoughtfully as two young actors, Stephanie Barney and Mary Arnold, ran through a scene in Ted Tally’s “Hooters” that is set in a Cape Cod motel. He asks them to stop and begins to question one of the actors, starting with her luggage:

“Where’s the stuff you thought you needed for a girl’s weekend at the beach?” he asked.

He then explained that, as an exercise to do while studying a role, packing the things that your character would want or need for a trip is a way to get you thinking about how that character acts on a day-to-day basis. Fine tells her this is a way to get inside the character and, if she succeeds, her acting will be right for the character even before she gets to the stage.

“You’ve got to make that life real to you,” Fine asserts. “Not just today but any old day.”

Fine asks his students where they are in their own life and with this character they are playing, a young woman spending a girls’ weekend with a good, but not unconditionally good, friend in a cheap motel on Cape Cod.

“You have to consider that this is not a scene starting, but a life continuing.”

To help the actress get into her “bad girl,” Fine had two young, very good looking men stand behind the actress and follow her around the stage. He’s trying to get the actress to imagine what it’s like to be a good girl who looks forward to weekends away from the conventional trapping of life, basking in the sexual attraction men are feeling for her but not willing to admit her feeling of lust openly.

As the scene develops under Fine’s discerning eye, you find yourself wondering why this common sense approach to acting hasn’t caught on. Don’t waste your time about that. It has caught on.

Fine has personally coached Oscar winners Jennifer Connelly and Jared Leto; Oscar nominees Brad Pitt, Michelle Williams, Salma Hayek, Bradley Cooper and Will Smith; Golden Globe nominees Simon Baker, Rosanna Arquette, Brooke Shields and Mark Harmon; and Emmy winners Kim Delaney, Sela Ward and Michael Chiklis.

Fine is a 56-year-old Providence native who attended high school in Cranston and graduated from RIC in 1981.

“He began a master’s degree at Emerson College and finished it back at RIC,” according to his studio’s website. “After short stints in New York, teaching at The American Musical and Dramatic Academy, and then back in Rhode Island, he moved to Los Angeles in 1985.”

He started coaching actors at his home, and one of his earliest students was Paul Stanley, the guitarist from Kiss who wanted to get into acting. At a party at Stanley’s house, Fine met Robert Downey Jr., Sarah Jessica Parker and other up-and-coming actors of the time.

“I was suddenly in that circle,” Fine said. “It went from one celebrity to another and then it just happened for me.”

Within a couple of years, he opened the Howard Fine Acting Studio. Now, he has 15 acting coaches working for him, he’s opened an affiliate studio in Australia, and he teaches master classes in cities such as New York and London.

Fine doesn’t advertise. Actors find him through word of mouth.

How has he become such a successful acting coach? Fine says it’s because he never wanted to become an actor himself. He describes his acting skills as only adequate. He did, however, want to become a great teacher.

“Every role that an actor is going to play already exists inside him or her,” Fine has said of his teaching. “Getting actors to make the most personal connection to a part is the core of the teaching-coaching process.”

After having all those marquee names on his list of alumni and students, you might expect him to be a bit “Hollywood,” but he is not. On Saturday, Fine was teaching in front of a substantial group of interested parties. The exceptional good looks of a few of the attentive audience marked them as actors. Other actors attending were less obvious, and it was only by watching who was taking the most notes to give away the aspirations of others in the audience.

Fine looks less like a Hollywood A-lister than like a popular young academic who has just been awarded tenure. He has the confidence of years of study and experience in his demeanor, and you could imagine his fellow academics both envying and admiring the easy way he has with eager students. Nobody leaves the room while Howard Fine is explaining something, and the infrequent breaks in the class were marked by a rush to the table of refreshments behind the bleacher-like seats. Even then, the hubbub was hushed and the deference reserved for Fine was palpable.

There was nothing about Fine that encouraged that respect. It comes naturally to a man who cares more about what he does than what people think about him. If he had an entourage it was very well camouflaged. He remained approachable and considerate the whole time. In short, he was nothing like the inflated egotism that Hollywood often projects. His reason for being there was simple gratitude.

“Rhode Island College gave me a first-rate education and numerous opportunities to work on my craft,” he told the school. “The faculty members were supportive and knowledgeable and willing to mentor young talent. I feel a great deal of gratitude to the college for all that it did to nurture me and am delighted to give something back.”

Few acting teachers attain the kind of reputation Fine has, and part of that was Fine’s willingness to not hold back, to give everything he had to students. That included training other teachers, and the Howard Fine Acting Studio has a faculty of at least six professional coaches and teachers who teach the same techniques and attitudes that Fine teaches himself.

“RIC’s Music, Theatre and Dance program has a record of producing outstanding alumni like Howard Fine,” said RIC President Nancy Carriuolo. “We are delighted that he is returning to his alma mater to help develop the next generation of RIC theatre graduates.”