The co-star Robert De Niro refused to speak to for two months: “It was very unpleasant”
Method actors are a weird bunch, but it can’t be a coincidence that so many of cinema’s all-time greats have adopted the practice, with Robert De Niro among its most famous students.
When the two-time Academy Award-winning icon, Al Pacino, Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, Daniel Day-Lewis, Christian Bale, Dustin Hoffman, Joaquin Phoenix, and many more have subscribed to immersing themselves completely in character for the duration of a production and consistently delivered incredible results, you can’t say that it’s entirely pointless.
Then again, there are two words that can effortlessly counteract that argument: Jared Leto. While the names mentioned above are considered among either the best in modern history or among the finest to ever grace the silver screen, nobody gives a fuck about Leto refusing to drop the act when he’s making shite like Morbius and Suicide Squad, giving the method a bad name.
If it works, it has a tendency to work very well, but it’s always been a bit of a nightmare for everyone else. Not every star in the industry is a fan of the all-consuming approach, and many of them can’t stand it and decry anyone who swears by it, and the most obvious downside is that refusing to break character creates intentional distance between two co-stars, which doesn’t make for the happiest of on-set environments.
De Niro likely doesn’t care, though, since his peak years were defined by a laser-focused attention to what he was doing. He trusted the directors and the rest of the cast to pull their weight, but he wasn’t interested in what they were doing away from the cameras when he was eating, sleeping, living, and breathing the role.
In Roland Joffé’s 1986 period piece, The Mission, De Niro played Rodrigo Mendoza, a former slave trader seeking redemption from Jeremy Irons’ Father Gabriel in 18th-century Paraguay. He was as committed as always, and despite sharing plenty of screentime with the picture’s second lead, Irons revealed that they barely said a word to each other when they weren’t conversing as their characters.
The parts they played were antagonistic, and since he’s a method actor, De Niro opted not to exchange pleasantries with his fictional adversary. That led to some friction between the two, with the Raging Bull and King of Comedy headliner making a point of ignoring Irons at every turn.
“I don’t know how much of it was method, but it was very unpleasant,” the latter recalled after sharing that even though they became friendly after the production had wrapped, De Niro was so invested in maintaining the illusion of Rodrigo Mendoza that he inadvertently made things increasingly miserable for the person he was spending so much on-camera time with.
The mission did win an Oscar for its cinematography and landed six additional nominations, including ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’, but that didn’t do much for Irons’ misery, but at least he and De Niro got over it eventually.
