Whenever an actor decides to use "the method" approach to a role, it usually ends up making
headlines.
The process of an actor really getting their head inside a character has made for some
jaw-dropping performances, and some shocking behind-the-scenes tales.
Here are just a few times method actors have taken things too far for a part.
Adrien Brody
In 2002, Adrien Brody scored the role of a lifetime when director Roman Polanski picked
him to star as Polish-Jewish musician and composer Władysław Szpilman in The Pianist.
The actor immediately buried himself in Szpilman's World War II memoirs in order to better understand
the role.
After being forced into the Warsaw Ghetto and separated from his family, Szpilman eluded
Nazi forces and survived the Holocaust by hiding in the ruins of Warsaw.
To prepare for the part, the six-foot-one Brody spent six weeks on an intense diet to
get down to a mere 130 pounds before filming began.
For the better part of a year, Brody essentially "dropped out" of modern society.
He moved to Europe, sold his car, and disconnected his cellphone.
"Because the character loses so much, I wanted to kind of have a glimpse of what that loss
would feel like."
After filming wrapped, it took over half a year for Brody to recover.
He later admitted:
"There were times when I was concerned that I might not be able to get out of it sane,
because I didn't realize how far it had taken me."
In the end, his dedication to the role paid off in a big way, not only did The Pianist
earn widespread acclaim and accolades, but Brody won the Academy Award for Best Actor,
making him the youngest winner ever in that category.
Jim Carrey
In 1999, Jim Carrey took a deep dive into method acting when he played comedian Andy
Kaufman in Man on the Moon.
While a handful of stories from the set made it into the news over the years, a 2017 Netflix
documentary revealed many more jaw-dropping moments from the film's production.
In Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond, it becomes clear that Carrey's dedication to the role
went way beyond spitting in the face of professional wrestler Jerry Lawler.
During the shoot, Carrey didn't just play Kaufman, he channeled him, to the point that
he would refer to "Jim Carrey" as a completely different person.
"Jim had trouble later on and...and it kind of threw him for a loop and he got angry."
As Andy, Carrey also had emotional reunions with members of Kaufman's family, including
an hour-long conversation with his daughter, who never got a chance to meet her father
before he passed away from lung cancer in 1984.
"So that day she came into Andy's trailer and talked to her father."
As Kaufman's vulgar alter ego Tony Clifton, Carrey went on drunken tirades, crashed a
convertible, and stormed into Steven Spielberg's office to chat with him about Jaws.
"I have this uh gentleman in the lobby that is looking for Steven Spielberg."
"I would like to see the real shark.
This shark is a phony shark."
Even though Carrey won praise for his performance, the role clearly took a toll on him, and he
later claimed that he could barely remember who he was after filming.
"But wasn't it funny?
Yes, it was funny, Andy.
It was."
Nicolas Cage
He might be better known today for his goofy action movies and eccentric spending habits,
but Nicolas Cage is also dedicated to method acting.
His approach to acting has yielded mixed results over the years; he earned acclaim for films
like Adaptation and Leaving Las Vegas, and derision for movies like The Wicker Man.
"Aahhh my eyes!
My eyes!
Aaahhh!"
One of his best method roles dates back to the early days of his acting career, when
he was cast in the 1984 war drama Birdy.
In the film, Cage plays a disfigured Vietnam veteran who visits a friend from the war in
a psychiatric hospital.
To prepare for the part, the then 19-year-old Cage had his wisdom teeth extracted without
anesthesia.
He also spent weeks with his face bandaged day and night, so he could experience the
physical pain and discomfort his character was going through.
His impressive dedication to the part shows, and Cage's work in Birdy remains one of his
best early performances.
Christian Bale
While method acting began as a way to harness personal experiences and emotions as a way
to play a part more convincingly, in recent years it's become almost synonymous with drastic
physical transformations.
In one prominent example, Christian Bale made headlines and jeopardized his health when
he lost a jaw-dropping 63 pounds to play the insomnia-plagued Trevor Reznik in 2004's The
Machinist.
For weeks before filming began, Bale survived on just an apple and a can of tuna fish a
day.
According to his Machinist costar Michael Ironside, the drastic diet wasn't even necessary.
The screenwriter for the movie had put some example weights into the script based on his
own height.
When the much-taller Bale saw the figures, he decided to go for those weights instead
of something more realistic for his bigger frame.
After filming wrapped, Bale bulked up again, gaining 109 pounds in just six months for
his next role in Batman Begins.
He's gone on to use drastic weight changes in preparation for other parts, too; more
recently, Bale shaved his head and packed on the pounds to play former U.S. vice president
Dick Cheney in the 2018 biopic Backseat.
Martin Sheen
After director Francis Ford Coppola fired Harvey Keitel from 1979's Apocalypse Now two
weeks into production, he picked Martin Sheen to take Keitel's place as Captain Benjamin
L. Willard.
Sheen's approach was to use experiences from his own life to bring himself closer to his
character.
Sheen certainly brought his own demons with him to the set.
His personal struggle with alcoholism played a key role in the film's famous opening scene.
The actor was completely drunk that day, and Coppola captured the unscripted mirror-smashing,
weeping, and blood-smearing that followed.
When production moved to the jungle, Sheen told his friends that he wasn't sure he'd
make it out of the shoot alive, and he almost didn't.
Sheen actually suffered a heart attack and crawled for a quarter mile to a road, where
he was found and airlifted to a hospital.
He was back on the set just six weeks later.
In this case, at least, it wasn't just one actor who was uncontrollable on set.
From the tropical diseases that ravaged the crew to actual cadavers showing up on the
set, the entire shoot was chaotic.
If anything, it would have been weird if Martin Sheen hadn't acted weird.
Matt Damon
He may be famous today for movies like Good Will Hunting and the Jason Bourne franchise,
but in the early 1990s, Matt Damon was just another unknown actor.
All that changed when he was cast in the 1996 war drama Courage Under Fire.
To prepare for the role of an ex-medic with a drug addiction, Damon dropped down to a
mere 139 pounds by running 13 miles a day and subsisting on a diet made almost entirely
of chicken breast.
The drastic weight loss took an enormous toll on his body, after filming wrapped, he had
to take special medication for a year and a half just to repair the damage done to his
adrenal gland.
Daniel Day-Lewis
For much of his career, three-time Oscar winner Daniel Day-Lewis has been notorious for his
intense approach to method acting.
The actor's behavior on and off the set is the stuff of legend.
In preparation for his role as John Proctor in The Crucible, Day-Lewis went back to basics,
literally.
He lived for months on the set of the 17th-century village with no electricity or running water,
built his character's home by hand with only tools from that era, and even gave up his
beloved motorcycle in favor of a horse.
Ashton Kutcher
After Apple CEO Steve Jobs passed away in 2011, the race was on in Hollywood to develop
a feature film based on the mogul's remarkable life.
For the 2013 independent film Jobs, director Joshua Michael Stern picked Ashton Kutcher
to portray the complex computer pioneer, and the actor spent three months preparing for
the role, watching hundreds of hours of archival footage to understand Jobs' accent, posture,
and facial expressions.
He didn't stop there, Kutcher also tried adopting a fruit-only diet, similar to the one Jobs
adopted as part of an alternative medicine regimen to treat his cancer.
For Kutcher, the drastic diet caused its own health issues, two days before filming began,
he ended up in the hospital with pancreas problems.
Kutcher explained: "I was like doubled over in pain.
My pancreas levels were completely out of whack.
It was really terrifying."
In the end, Kutcher's dedication paid off, while Jobs received mixed reviews and was
criticized for its historical inaccuracies, Kutcher's performance earned praise.
"What are you...you gonna fire me?"
"No!
I already fired you!"
"Why are you still here?"