When Ron Howard “upset” his actors by banning method acting on set: “We just kept saying no”
Method acting has been one of the industry’s most divisive practices since Marlon Brando first popularised it in the 1950s, but what happens when a director hates the process? If they’re Ron Howard, they put their foot down and tell the actors it’s not happening.
Plenty of well-known thespians have been open in savaging their peers for embracing the method, steeping themselves in character and refusing to emerge until the end of shooting, but nobody really thinks about how a filmmaker who despises the technique works with an actor who swears by it.
Not that Howard is against it, having spent a brief period as a method man himself, or child, when he used the memories of his dead dog to give what he called two of his greatest-ever performances as a youngster, which was admittedly six decades ago, and it’s been four since he was a full-time actor.
Throughout his career, he’s worked with many names who are totally and utterly committed to their work, but aren’t necessarily method actors. Tom Hanks, Russell Crowe, Glenn Close, Ed Harris, Jennifer Connelly, Kevin Bacon, and Woody Harrelson have all made at least two films with the two-time Academy Award winner, but arguably his only multi-time collaborator with a method reputation is Val Kilmer.
Nobody would consider Jude Law and Vanessa Kirby as students of the method, but when they were filming Howard’s survival thriller Eden, they wanted to add more authenticity to their portrayals of husband and wife Friedrich and Dora Ritter.
Inspired by a true story, the movie follows the Ritters as they abandon their native Germany to start a new life on the remote island of Floreana, where they’re joined by Daniel Brühl and Ana de Armas’ fellow expats and married couple, Heinz and Margret Wittmer.
Most of the production was captured on location around Australia’s Gold Coast and the Galapagos Islands, with Law and Kirby becoming so invested in their arcs that they pleaded with Howard to let them stay in their characters’ marital home for the duration of principal photography to plunge them even further into their characters’ psyches.
“They kept wanting to live in their house there,” he confessed to Vanity Fair. “And they were so upset with us that we just kept saying, ‘No, we’re here all day, but you just can’t do that.'” With local wildlife, some of which was dangerous, hovering around the set, the director didn’t want to put his stars in danger by allowing them to go full-blown method.
Instead, Law and Kirby were forced to retire to whatever accommodation Eden had provided for its cast and crew, which was inevitably a damned sight nicer than the ramshackle abode they would have preferred, seeing as the picture cost tens of millions of dollars and boasts four high-profile actors in the lead roles, which means they almost certainly had a cushy hotel to return to at the end of every day.
As far as the method goes, having sleepovers isn’t Daniel Day-Lewis material. Still, even though it pissed them off, Howard refused to budge.
