From near starvation to an actor grinding his teeth down, here are 8 Actors Who Went
TOO FAR For A Role
Number 8.
Jared Leto in Suicide Squad After his academy award winning turn as the
transgender "Rayon" in Dallas Buyers Club, Jared Leto positioned himself as one of the
premiere method actors in Hollywood.
Beyond losing weight, Leto refused to be addressed by anything besides his character name on
set.
He even simulated the characters kleptomania by nicking small belongings from co-star Matthew
McConaughey, such as his lighters, his pocket knife, etc.
The director even went as far as to say he did not actually meet Jared until months after
filming had wrapped.
So when Leto was cast as The Joker, Batman's biggest villain, people were intrigued.
The last person to portray The Joker (Heath Ledger), won an academy award for his performance.
People didn't know what to expect from Leto on his portrayal of the beloved character,
but they knew it would be interesting.
His Joker "method" however, just ended up being extremely annoying to deal with.
The Joker is an agent of chaos with a sick mentality.
To have someone inducing this madness on a film set, where hundreds of people are just
trying to do their job, turned out to be a hellish experience for the crew and fellow
cast.
Leto stayed in character the duration of filming, causing co-star Scott Eastwood to be afraid
to approach him on set and also giving director David Ayers a difficult time communicating
with him.
If he had stopped here, it may have been forgivable in the name of art, but he went too far when
he sent the entire cast the body of a hog along with a video message.
He even sent Margot Robbie a love letter accompanied by a living rat.
I mean what is she supposed to do with that?
Number 7.
Robert De Niro in Cape Fear Whether they put on weight, sit through hours
of hair and makeup, or shave their head, the best actors are known to commit to their role
any way possible.
This is just part of the business.
To an actor, it's worth going the extra mile.
It's not usually an immense sacrifice as weight can return to normal, makeup can wash off
and your hair can grow back.
Robert De Niro is no stranger to transformation.
For his role in Raging Bull, De Niro worked out tirelessly to gain the physique of a title
fight contender.
THEN, the film took a hiatus so he could put on 75-100 pounds to play the same character
old and fat.
This was heralded as remarkable transformation for a classic film.
But when Bobby landed the role of Max Cody, he took physical transformation a step too
far.
De Niro thought his pearly whites were not convincing or frightening enough to do the
terror of Cady justice.
So, reportedly, he paid $5,000 to have his teeth butchered.
He had them purposefully chipped, bent and yellowed to capture the menacing appearance
of the villain.
After filming he paid the dentist $20,000 to have them repaired!
But he could have spent all the money in the world and he wouldn't be able to undo some
of the damage.
Although they are back to white, De Niro will forever have to live with riled teeth just
to add a little nuance to one film.
Number 6.
Tom Hanks in Cast Away There's something about Tom Hanks that most
moviegoers find irresistibly charming.
Although he is one of America's greatest actors, it is uncommon for Hanks to stray too far
from his signature curly hair and slant throat voice in a role without wearing out his welcome
with audiences, he's just that good.
But when he filmed Cast Away, he went all in.
Hanks and the director Robert Zemeckis wanted to portray the story of a marooned Fedex employee
as real as possible.
After filming the opening of the movie, the project took a year long hiatus so Hanks could
properly ravage his body the way being stranded on a desert island would.
He lost 55 pounds for the role, weakening his immune system in the process.
While filming in Fiji, he cut his leg and developed a staph infection.
For two weeks the bacteria tore through his defenseless body until he finally went to
a doctor.
There, he was sent to the hospital for immediate surgery.
The doctor determined that if he had waited, possibly even just a couple hours more, the
world might have lost Tom Hanks from blood poisoning.
The crew then had to take an additional 3 weeks off while his body recovered.
Number 5.
Daniel Day-Lewis in Last of the Mohicans Daniel Day-Lewis is no doubt the most famous
method actor in recent memory.
He rose to prevalence winning an academy award for his portrayal of Christy Brown in My Left
Foot, a role which required Lewis accomplish everything in the script using only his, you
guessed it, left foot.
He even refused to leave the wheelchair his palsy stricken character would realistically
be confined to, breaking two ribs in the process due to the consistent contortion of his body.
So when Michael Mann cast him as Hawkeye in The Last of the Mohicans, everyone (especially
the ladies) were excited to see him transform into the resourceful, strapping, full haired
frontiersman based on Daniel Boone.
But Day-Lewis, the son of a poet, had no wilderness or weapons experience.
Over the next six months, He lived in the wilderness learning survival and weaponry
from a Fort Brad general who specializes in training fighter pilots shot down in enemy
territory, pretty intense stuff.
He also worked with a man who treats the 18th century like a lifestyle, living outside,
tracking and hunting animals for food and clothing just like Daniel Boone did in his
day.
By the end of the six months, Lewis was one with the role, and with the wilderness his
character so stoically cherished.
Lewis was so invested in fact, that when filming was over, he had a hard time adjusting to
normal, civilized life.
This is not an uncommon byproduct of his acting method, as he has spoken in the past of a
comedown period.
A "bereavement" of the character he in which "no part of you wishes to leave the character
behind".
Considering the source material, Mohicans was the hardest character to separate from.
He had become so deep in the lifestyle that he started to suffer from claustrophobia,
claiming that he couldn't be inside for more than an hour.
He also sought medical attention for "slight hallucinations", and was prescribed a cocktail
of pharmaceuticals to stabilize his mind.
It was not long after this film that Daniel quit acting for a period of time to study
as a cobbler in France.
Many believe this was motivated by the strain he put himself under preparing for and undoing
this role.
Number 4.
Leonardo DiCaprio in The Revenant For some actors, the idea of taking a role
too far for the sake of the performance might be non-existent.
They proudly consider it part of their craft, and maybe they should.
Almost everyone on this list earned an academy award or nomination for their insistence.
Chief among the dissenters might be Leonardo DiCaprio, who was considered for many years
to be the best actor that had never won an academy award.
This all ended in 2016 when he finally took home the Oscar for his portrayal of Hugh Glass
in The Revenant.
But no matter how covetous the golden statue is, it's never worth risking your life for,
which Leo did multiple times while filming.
The story of the frontier fur traders was filmed deep in the Canadian wilderness.
DiCaprio subjected himself to extreme cold while shooting to help capture the mindset,
eventually subjecting himself to hypothermia by diving into freezing rivers with little
clothes on.
He also ate raw liver and crawled inside the carcass of an animal, exposing himself to
extreme bacteria.
If you ask him today he will probably tell you it was worth it, but if he had developed
a serious infection or gone deep into hyperthermia out there deep in isolated Canadian forest,
there is no telling if he could have been evacuated in time to be saved.
Too far.
Number 3.
Sylvester Stallone in Rocky Series When you're a method actor, you are striving
to emulate the exact lives of those you are portraying.
If you're playing a cop, it would be good to go for a couple ride alongs.
If you're playing a fisher, it would be good to spend a month on the open sea.
If you're playing a boxer, it would be good to … have ripped menacing monsters of men
repeatedly punch you as hard as they can?
That's why Sylvester Stallone figured at least during his duration as the Italian Stallion,
Rocky.
During the first three films of the franchise, Sly repeatedly asked the likes of Carl Weathers
and Mr. T to sincerely punch him in the face and body while filming.
At one point this caused a broken rib, sidelining the production for 5 days, but Stallone didn't
learn his lesson.
Since he was directing, there was no one to tell him that asking Dolph Lundgren to actually
try and knock him out during filming of Rocky IV was a bad idea.
Lundgren reportedly punched his chest so hard his heart banged up against his ribs, an injury
typically reserved for car crashes.
That night his blood pressure rose to 260 and again he was sidelined for 5 days for
recovery.
Number 2.
Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight Jared Leto pushed the cast and crew to the
edge when he prepared for The Joker, for Heath Ledger, it was himself.
When he was first cast as beloved antagonist, the comic movie fanbase was enraged.
The saw Heath as nothing more than a pretty boy, and it was believed that no one could
top multi-academy award winner Jack Nicholson's portrayal in 1989's Batman.
Ledger himself spoke to Nicholson, who told him not to worry too much about the role,
but he did.
His father relays the Ledger locked himself in a hotel room for a month.
He tried out different voices attempting to find something that serves the history, but
also was iconic in his own right.
He kept a journal in the voice of The Joker, hoping to tap into the inherit madness of
the character.
And he did.
Audiences were blown away by the ferocity he brought to the role, earning him an academy
award for acting, unprecedented for a comic book movie.
Unfortunately Ledger passed away from an overdose, and was not able to see the reception to his
masterstroke performance.
Specifically he took a toxic cocktail of prescription medications, six in total.
It is widely speculated, but unconfirmed, that some of the anxiety medications in the
cocktail were prescribed for the strain his method of madness put on him.
It is important to note that Ledger previously had a substance problem, promising his girlfriend
Michelle Williams that he would get clean as she attempted to take him to rehab back
in 2006, two years before his passing.
But it is possible attempting to tap into the demons of the joker may have brought out
some of his own.
Number 1.
Christian Bale in The Machinist These days, it seems Christian Bale can't
go a movie without enduring a dramatic weight transformation.
After bulking up for Batman Begins, he went skinny and frail to play a crack addict in
The Fighter, then he bulked back up for the batman sequel, then he got fat for American
Hustle, so on and so forth.
Before becoming batman and a megastar thereafter, Bale first fluctuated his weight to play the
psychologically tormented Trevor in The Machinist.
To this day this is his most drastic transformation, and one of the most insane undertakings in
cinema history.
Coming off his role as a man who does "1,000 crunches a day" in American Psycho (and looks
like it), audiences were shocked to see every muscle and bone pushing out his thin skin
after he lost 62 pounds for The Machinist.
To achieve this he was eating one apple a day and that's it.
He also smoked cigarettes to curb his appetite.
Bale says the process put him in a zen like state, having seemingly abandoned the good
health of his body, he felt like a "being of pure thought".
The weakness his starvation induced caused him to have trouble even walking up a flight
of stairs.
Close friends of his worried the weight loss would end him.
Bale defends his transformations, stating that it's easier for him to get into character
when he looks in the mirror and doesn't recognize himself.
Although true, the way he achieved this for the role was just a little too extreme for
health's sake.