The 10 craziest method acting moments in Hollywood history
Modern acting is gripped by one key question. That is, to what extent should a performer channel their character’s version of reality. For some, the idea of allowing oneself to be totally absorbed into a non-fictional character seems ludicrous; for others, it’s essential to a believable performance. Whether they agree with the approach or not, over the years, everyone from Al Pacino to Kate Winslet has relied on some aspect of the method acting rulebook.
The roots of method acting lie with theatre practitioner Konstantin Stanislavski. He called his approach to acting “the system”, but most know it as the Stanislavski method. This method revolves around a few simple concepts that even people who have never acted in their life have probably heard of. The most important of these is that the actor must, in the moment of action, be genuinely feeling and experiencing what a character is going through. Then there’s “affective memory”, in which the actor triggers an emotional state through their own memories. It’s not quite smell-the-fart acting, but it’s close.
After training under Stella Adler, Marlon Brando adopted the Stanislavski system and is widely regarded as popularising the technique. During his very first broadway play, for example, he got a stagehand to throw a bucket of ice-cold water over him while he ran up and down the stairs so that when he came on stage, it looked like he really had just emerged from a frozen lake.
Since then, any actor looking to garner the respect of the Hollywood Foreign Press has adopted method acting, leading to some pretty wacky on-set moments. Below we’ll be looking at ten of the most bizarre.
The craziest method acting moments in Hollywood history:
Dustin Hoffman in Marathon Man
Let’s begin with perhaps the most famous conversation in method acting history. In 1976, Dustin Hoffman, having made his name in films like Midnight Cowboy and The Graduate, landed the role of ‘Babe’ Levy in Marathon Man.
After getting caught up in a Nazi War criminal’s plot to seize stolen diamonds from his dead brother’s safe, Babe is abducted and tortured. At one point, Hoffman’s character is forced to stay awake for three days straight. When his costar Lawrence Olivier noticed him looking a little groggy, Hoffman revealed that he’d kept himself awake for 72 hours to convey his character’s sleep deprivation better. “My dear boy,” Olivier replied. “Why don’t you just try acting?”
Adrien Brody in The Pianist
The Pianist tells the story of real-life Polish-Jewish concert pianist Władysław Szpilman, who spent two years hiding in the ghetto of Warsaw during the Nazi occupation of Poland during World War II. To get into the role, Adrien Brody not only practised the piano for two hours every day; he also got rid of all his worldly possessions and broke up with his girlfriend.
In a 2003 interview with the BBC, the actor explained: “I gave up my apartment, I sold my car, I disconnected the phones, and I left. I took two bags and my keyboard and moved to Europe.” He arrived on that set with nothing but those two bags and his keyboard, much to the bemusement of director Roman Polanski.
Dennis Hopper in Apocolypse Now
Method doesn’t quite do justice to Dennis Hopper’s behaviour on the set of Apocalypse Now. The actor’s drink-and-drugs lifestyle made him Marlon Brando’s enemy number one, forcing Francis Ford Coppola to shoot their scenes on alternate nights. Hopper was so into drugs by this point that for his cameo as a madcap photojournalist, he subsisted on a diet of benzedrine, marijuana and good old-fashioned LSD.
Looking back on Hopper’s crazed behaviour on set, Gray Frederickson told The Independent: “That’s the way he was, on and off camera. But he was fun and everybody loved him. There wasn’t an edge to his craziness at all. Actually, he’s a lot more serious and less friendly now that he’s not so crazy.” Of course, there were other downsides to Hopper’s approach. “Dennis was known at that time for never taking a shower,” crew member Doug Claybourne recalled. “You didn’t want to stand too close to him”.
Gary Oldman in Darkest Hour
Many actors have portrayed UK wartime prime minister Winston Churchill, including the great Richard Burton. However, few have relished the opportunity more than Gary Oldman, who seems to have taken his involvement in 2017’s Darkest Hour as an excuse to indulge his vices.
To really get a feel of the character, the British actor insisted on smoking genuine Cuban cigars for the entire shoot. During an appearance on The Graham Norton Show, the actor claimed he’d smoked a dozen $50 cigars a day for the entire 48 days. That’s $31,000 worth of authenticity right there. No wonder he ended up with a stomach ulcer.
Choi Min-sik in Oldboy
For his portrayal of Dae-Su, an unfortunate abductee who spends 15 years in the same cell with only a television for company, South Korean actor Choi Min-sik held nothing back.
His performance in the psychological horror saw the actor submit himself to a series of brutal, disgusting and downright insane antics. As well as branding himself for real (one burn for every year his character was imprisoned), he ate an entire living octopus in a single take. “I felt sorry for the octopus,” he explains in behind-the-scenes footage from the film. “I think we did four of five takes”. Something tells me Choi Min-sik never saw My Octopus Teacher.
Al Pacino in The Scent of A Woman
In 1992’s The Scent of A Woman, notorious method maestro Al Pacino plays Frank, a retired US Army colonel who happens to be blind. By this point in his career, Pacino was already known for putting every fibre of his being into his roles. On landing the role of Frank, he sought advice and training from a school for the blind and began living day-to-day as if he had actually lost his sight.
Initially, even simple things like pouring himself some water were impossible. However, by the time the principal photography began, he was already getting used to this new way of life. To ensure all of this preparation wasn’t wasted, he asked everyone in the cast and crew to treat him as if they might be a blind person. In between takes, he walked around with a cane and never once looked anyone, not even his co-stars, in the eye.
Hilary Swank in Boys Don‘t Cry
Though Hilary Swank was devastated after being cut from the cast of 90210, her character’s exit from the long-running teen drama allowed her to audition for more serious projects like Kimberly Pierce’s Boys Don’t Cry, which tells the real-life story of Brandon Teena, a female-to-male trans person who leaves home to find love but ends up becoming the victim of a brutal hate crime.
Before auditioning for the role, Swank decided to live as a man for over a month, binding her breasts, deepening her voice and restricting her diet. After working out what did and didn’t work, she was already so deep into the character that even her neighbours didn’t recognise her and assumed she’d invited a male cousin to stay.
Nicolas Cage in Vampire’s Kiss
In 1986, Nicolas Cage was still just 22 and had starred almost solely in films for his uncle, Francis Ford Coppola. Already on the way up, he came across the script for Vampire’s Kiss and fell in love with the lead role. “I did the movie for no money,” he told Spin in 1989, “Because I liked the script and I wanted to try something new with my acting.”
Obsessed and willing to try anything, Cage went above and beyond. In one scene, the script calls for his character – a New York booking agent who is quite literally allergic to sunlight – to swallow a raw egg. Cage told the director to replace the egg with a cockroach, explaining that critters were his greatest fear and that this was precisely why he needed to eat one, whole – while it was still alive.
Jared Leto in Suicide Squad
Jared Leto is the most notorious creep in Hollywood. He may have taken things too far on the set of Suicide Squad. Leto’s approach was unhinged from the get-go. The actor allegedly sent the cast a butchered pig at the first table read – and that was only the beginning. As well as refusing to answer to his real name (the cast and crew had to refer to him as Mistah J), it is also claimed that he sent his castmates anal beads, used condoms and live rats. He sent Will Smith an envelope full of bullets, for God’s sake.
As Viola Davis revealed during an interview for Vanity Fair: “He did some bad things, Jared Leto did. He gave some really horrific gifts. He had a henchman who would come into the rehearsal room, and the henchman came in with a dead pig and plopped it on the table, and then he walked out.” Shame he was rubbish.
Sean Penn in Casualties of War
Casualties of War is not an easy watch. It tells the story of Pvt. Max Eriksson, played by Michael J. Fox, and Sgt. Tony Meserve, played by Sean Penn. After Penn’s character saves Eriksson during a battle in Vietnam, they come to blows when the senior officer abducts a Vietnamese teenage girl for his regiment’s pleasure.
In one scene, Penn’s character attacks a soldier who objects to the kidnapping. This led to the actual assault of John Leguizamo: “[When] my character refuses and Sean’s gotta slap me into submission, and of course, Sean doesn’t believe in stage combat because he’s too method for that sh*t, so he’s slapping me for real,” the actor told Hollywood.com. “We’re on the 13th take and my face [is] out to here and you can’t even understand the dialogue I’m saying and [director] Brian de Palma’s going, ‘We have to do it one more time, John, it was out of focus.’ So it’s ‘whack’ and ‘whack’ and I’m about to quit and then they cut the scene out of the movie.”
