What does Heath Ledger terrorizing Gotham,
Daniel Day-Lewis ill-advisedly bragging,
"I've abandoned my child."
and Leonardo DiCaprio getting mauled by bear,
all have in common? They each used
method acting to prepare for their role.
Heath Ledger isolated himself for weeks
to portray the Joker's chilling psychosis.
Daniel Day-Lewis spent months
in character before filming even began.
If I say I'm an oil man, you will agree.
And Leonardo DiCaprio really went into the woods and got mauled by a bear.
He ate raw bison liver instead.
Each of these performances received an Oscar but
unless we're actually told about the extreme lengths these actors went to,
there's no way for us to know.
Which begs the question: if Leonardo DiCaprio
really eats raw bison liver and nobody is around to see it,
does he still get the Oscar?
Needed to be done because we were striving for authenticity.
Modern method acting is based on a system developed in the Soviet Union as
a way to structure training for actors.
The system provides a framework for
actors to understand their characters, by drawing on their own experiences and imagination.
Many method actors take this to an extreme, pushing themselves to live
as if they really were their character.
But are intense method acting performances really better?
If you just look at the numbers, the Academy seems to
think they are.
Since 1951 there have been 132 Oscars awarded for
Best Actor and Best Actress and 59 have gone to actors with some training in
method acting. And 33 of these Oscars specifically went to actors who used
method acting techniques to prepare for the role.
But there's more to method acting than just winning Oscars.
There's been this kind of evolutionary dynamic
between watching an actor just for who they are, their screen presence, their persona,
versus how they inhabit or interpret a character.
Take Tom Cruise, for example.
Whether he's fighting a mummy,
fighting Morgan Freeman,
or fighting the shogunate,
it's impossible to see Tom Cruise as anyone but himself.
Does Tom Cruise even know the names of the characters he's playing anymore?
What is your name?
This creates a problem for actors. They become captives to their star personas.
Look at Leonardo DiCaprio for another example.
Despite being nominated five times as an actor,
Jamie Foxx in Ray.
He didn't actually win
an Oscar until 2016. And he won for what happened to be his most intensive method acting role.
I don't know who goes through the stronger emotional roller
coaster really, and physically: your character or the audience.
Me.
So taking on ambitious method acting performances can help actors be taken
more seriously. But there might be a more cynical reason behind method acting's popularity.
Really have seen method acting become a marketing tool. It doesn't
matter how good your performance is unless you have a really good
behind-the-scenes story to accompany it.
Hollywood is a business and businesses need marketing.
When Daniel Day-Lewis goes on Oprah, he gets to promote his
movie while also highlighting his own work as an actor.
I've begin to hear a voice.
Kind of a fingerprint of the soul.
"Fingerprint of the soul", very good.
There's no way for actors to show us all
the work that goes into a role, so they have to tell us instead.
My reaction to
eating that piece of meat is right up on screen.
But that doesn't mean method acting
is all about marketing, either.
After all, it helped Leonardo DiCaprio go
from this
"Open your eyes."
to this.
It really caught on in terms of
transforming the appreciation of an actor, from being someone we just enjoy
watching on screen, to being someone who really is consummate in their craft, who
works tirelessly to do justice to their character and serve the role as best as
they can.
Actors that have pursued intense method
acting routines have created some of the most memorable performances ever.
And to be fair to Leo, if I ate raw bison liver,
I would tell people too.