The method actor who fooled Leonardo DiCaprio: “I thought the man was having a heart attack”
Method acting is and always has been a divisive topic. The practice of physically inhabiting a character even when there’s absolutely no need to is seen by some as an unnecessary attempt from some actors to take themselves more seriously at the expense of their colleagues, whilst others view it as a dedicated evolution of the acting craft with the results to back it up. Method isn’t popular with everyone, but it still has its place, especially when actors like Leonardo DiCaprio are still firm believers.
DiCaprio has gone to some pretty extreme lengths to get into the minds of his various characters. These include his part in The Revenant, which is famously the movie that finally bagged him a ‘Best Actor’ Oscar. Would he have busted that slump if he hadn’t taken the role so seriously? It’s an interesting hypothetical. Perhaps Leo was won round to method acting by working alongside Christopher Walken, who played his character’s father in Steven Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can. As he told IGN, one scene with the legendary performer left a lasting impact on him.
“The scene where I come back to see my dad and he’s talking about my mom and all of the sudden he… he like kind of hyperventilates,” the star recalled. “I was sitting there across the table from him while he was doing that, and it was completely unexpected. It wasn’t in the script. It was his own… completely his own doing. I thought the man was having a heart attack in front of me. I honestly was about two seconds away from saying, ‘Cut! There’s something wrong with Chris!’”
Walken plays Frank Abagnale Sr, a tax-dodging businessman who instils in his son the idea that financial success means everything. His relationship with Frank Jr is the driving force of the movie; even as he jets off around the world, forging cheques and leading the FBI on a merry chase, his mind is on his father and the misguided idea that he is making him proud.
Unlike traditional method actors, Walken doesn’t have a habit of fully embodying his characters off-screen. He does however employ a technique called ‘affective memory’, which requires an actor to think of a real memory to evoke a similar emotion during a scene. Take the legendary Russian roulette sequence from The Deer Hunter. Needing to convey that his character felt betrayed and alone, Walken thought back to being sent away to a summer camp when he was a child. This anchored the scene’s premise in reality and resulted in one of the most affecting moments in cinema history.
“It’s a testament how he is as an actor. I was blown away,” DiCaprio said of his co-star, who was nominated for a ‘Best Supporting Actor’ Oscar for his work. “It is [one of those times] where you have a cinematic experience like that, where you are so forced into the world where you think that it’s actual reality.” He called the improvised scene “one of my most memorable experiences making films.”
Say what you will about method acting or any of its subsidiaries, but if it was able to get this sort of reaction out of an actor like Leonardo DiCaprio, then maybe it’s not as bad as some people think.
