The Method Acting Thread

[Trace Buster Buster]

Sometimes I think method acting is a bit of a fraud. I understand physical transformations but this, "I'm playing a drug dealer so I'm going to hang out with drug dealers for a month to capture the character," is a little over the top. You do what you gotta do to get into character I guess I don't know. I'm not an actor though so maybe I'm wrong.

[Poya]

Originally Posted by Trace Buster Buster

Sometimes I think method acting is a bit of a fraud. I understand physical transformations but this, "I'm playing a drug dealer so I'm going to hang out with drug dealers for a month to capture the character," is a little over the top. You do what you gotta do to get into character I guess I don't know. I'm not an actor though so maybe I'm wrong.

I’m glad you brought this up because that means I have an excuse to bring up this recent Daniel Day Lewis anecdote:

Perhaps the most touching anecdote I’ve ever read about Daniel Day-Lewis comes from his Boxer (1997) co-star Emily Watson, who revealed in a 2012 Time magazine profile that she once dared to question the celebrated actor about his notorious process. You know about the process, of course. We’ve all heard about Day-Lewis regularly submerging himself so deeply into his roles that he makes Method stalwarts like Marlon Brando look like community theater amateurs. For The Boxer, Day-Lewis had really learned to box, wound up with a broken nose and a bad back, and had made sure to keep his distance from Watson, who played his long-separated girlfriend. Years earlier, for The Last of the Mohicans (1992), he had lived in the wilderness and built canoes and captured, skinned, and ate wild animals. Before that, on My Left Foot (1989), about the life of a writer with severe cerebral palsy, he had remained in a wheelchair throughout production, with crew members having to feed and carry him.

“Why do you work like that?” Watson says she asked him.

“Well,” Day-Lewis replied, “I don’t think I’m a good enough actor to be able to not do it this way.”