Why Stanley Tucci can’t stand method acting: “Wanna be a soldier? Go join the fucking army”
Ever since Marlon Brando mumbled onto the scene in the 1950s and turned the profession upside down, method acting has remained one of the industry’s most polarising practices, although no prizes are getting handed out for guessing which side of the divide Stanley Tucci falls on.
Many thespians swear by the method, but just as many think it’s a complete waste of time. However, because some of the results have been so spectacular, seminal, and ingrained in cinema history, it’s become impossible to call it pointless, since many of the results have spoken for themselves.
That said, for every Brando, Daniel Day-Lewis, or Robert De Niro, who immersed themselves so deeply in character that they refused to leave, there’s Jared Leto refusing to abandon his crutches when making fucking Morbius, of all things, or Aaron Eckhart deciding that fabricating a dead child was a good idea.
Tucci gave the best dramatic performance of his career and earned his only Academy Award nomination for playing a chilling murderer in Peter Jackson’s adaptation of The Lovely Bones. It was an against-type turn for the star, absolutely, but the thought of dedicating every moment of his waking life to embracing the character didn’t cross his mind so much as once.
“You have to be able to forget it all at the end of each day’s shoot,” he offered. “Otherwise, it destroys your life, and it also becomes indulgent.” Salient points, and whenever an actor bemoans how they almost lost themselves to a role or brought it home with them to the detriment of their friends and family, the overriding thought among many people is that they brought it entirely upon themselves.
“Ultimately, it’s not about you,” Tucci pointed out. “It’s about what story we are telling, and how you fit into that story. That’s my job as an actor. You’re not really a soldier. You’re not really a murderer. You’re pretending. Do you wanna be a soldier? Go join the fucking army.” Again, you can’t say that he’s wrong.
There’s no right or wrong way for a performer to approach their craft, but for every one of them who can’t see any other way of preparing for their next part than the method, there are just as many who’ll openly mock them for their utter inability to remember that, at the end of the day, they’re people dressing up as other people to entertain even more people.
The list of established names who’ve pinpointed Brando as the single most destructive force the acting profession has ever seen continues to grow longer with each passing generation, and you can count Tucci firmly among that number, since he’s just one of many who think the method is little more than self-aggrandising nonsense used for the purpose of ego inflation, more than anything else.
Some of the greatest performances ever committed to the silver screen are a direct result of the method, but to counterbalance it, you can say the same about some of the most laughable turns in recent memory.
