The 10 most unnecessary examples of method acting ever
Every actor has their own way of getting into character, but few aspects of the profession have proven quite as opinion-splitting as going method.
Some of the greatest talents to have ever graced the screen have sworn by it as the perfect means of preparation, while just as many legends and icons have blasted it as being unnecessary to the point of pointlessness.
Of course, there’s no right or wrong answer, but there are nonetheless plenty of examples where indulging in method acting hasn’t been entirely justified for whatever reason, whether it’s spending months honing a performance for nothing or going all-in for a terrible film.
It’s understandable that the following ten names had the best intentions in the world going in, but in every single instance, the rewards weren’t exactly worth the sacrifices.
The unnecessary method acting performances:
10. Tom Cruise in Collateral (Michael Mann, 2004)
Tom Cruise has never been known as a method actor, although he did disappear into the role of hitman Vincent in Michael Mann’s propulsive crime thriller by sporting grey hair and dipping his toes into villainous waters, something he’s never done since.
In order to get into the mindset of the intelligent, calculating, and remorseless contract killer, the actor thought it would be a good idea to get a job as a courier with FedEx. Still sporting his long hair and bushy beard from The Last Samurai, the A-list megastar would go about his day delivering packages to unsuspecting customers, blissfully unaware they’d just come face-to-face with the biggest star in Hollywood.
It was designed as an exercise in blending in, which sort of makes sense. However, considering Cruise looked completely different in Collateral and Vincent doesn’t indulge in a great deal of stealth when he’s dropping bodies and causing chaos, it all seems a bit pointless.
9. Aaron Eckhart in Rabbit Hole (John Cameron Mitchell, 2010)
Based on the play of the same name by David Lindsay-Abaire – who also penned the screenplay – Rabbit Hole stars Aaron Eckhart and Nicole Kidman as a couple still crippled by the death of their young son eight months previously.
Their relationship begins to falter in the face of such overwhelming grief in a hard-hitting drama that doesn’t flinch in the face of difficult subject matter. That being said, the optics behind Eckhart’s preparations are borderline exploitative.
In order to get into character, the actor – who doesn’t have any children of his own – attended a support group for bereaved parents and pretended he had one of them, even being brought to tears by his own entirely fabricated story. It was a questionable approach at best, not to mention an insult to everyone else in attendance.
8. Shia LaBeouf in Fury (David Ayer, 2014)
David Ayer has been open in admitting he wanted to foster a tense atmosphere on the set of his World War II tank drama, but Shia LaBeouf took things several steps further than the rest of the ensemble.
In addition to having one of his teeth pulled out by “some guy in Reseda next to a Radio Shack”, he also sliced his own face open with a knife and kept reopening the wound, even though the production had a perfectly good prosthetics and makeup department that would have saved him the trouble.
As the devoutly religious tank gunner Boyd ‘Bible’ Swan, LaBeouf even ended up converting to Christianity after being drawn in during his research, while Brad Pitt had to step in and tell him that despite his insistence to maintaining character, going weeks without a shower wasn’t enjoyable for those around him.
7. Andy Serkis in Topsy-Turvy (Mike Leigh, 1999)
Andy Serkis is the 17th-billed name in Mike Leigh’s period drama as choreographer John D’Auban, not that you’d know it from the extreme lengths he went to in order to embrace the role.
Still largely unknown at the time, the actor threw himself into his preparations and spent six months studying ballet and Irish dancing for hours a day and even dedicated an extensive amount of time to learning how to convincingly play the violin.
During post-production, though, any scenes that required Serkis to play the instrument were left on the cutting room floor, ostensibly causing him to learn the violin in the name of a film where he’s never once seen on-screen actually playing it.
6. Daniel Day-Lewis in The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Philip Kaufman, 1988)
Daniel Day-Lewis and method acting go hand-in-hand, so he was never going to take his role as a high-flying Czech surgeon lightly, but it’s not without merit to say that even by his standards, his meticulous nature was unnecessary.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being was adapted from a Czech novel written by a Czech author, but the entire film is in English. Day-Lewis does speak with a light local brogue for his turn as Tomas, though, but there was no real reason for him to learn an entirely new language.
Day-Lewis taught himself Czech – becoming fairly fluent in the process – for the express purpose of speaking nothing but English in a slight accent. His methods always yield results, but there was definitely an easier and less time-consuming way of going about it.
5. Lady Gaga in House of Gucci (Ridley Scott, 2021)
Having garnered an Academy Award nomination for her breakthrough movie role in A Star Is Born, Lady Gaga opted to take things to the next level and beyond for Ridley Scott’s House of Gucci.
Denying rumours that she’d remained in character for 18 months to Screen Daily, the star insisted it was only nine and a half. “And when I say being in character, that also means doing a lot of research,” she explained. “Which can extend anywhere from me finding psychic advisers to the family and getting them on Zoom calls, or rummaging through as many photographs of her hands as I could find to see what colour nail polishes she wore.”
Although Gaga did somewhat surprisingly earn a Golden Globe nomination in the ‘Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama’ category, her cartoonish caricature of Patrizia Reggiani didn’t come across on-screen as something that required over nine months of total immersion.
4. Montgomery Clift in From Here to Eternity (Fred Zinnemann, 1953)
Montgomery Clift was always known as a method actor, getting in on the act before James Dean and Marlon Brando popularised it, even if his efforts were sometimes completely ignored.
While he did earn an Academy Award nomination for ‘Best Actor’ in From Here to Eternity, the production decided that the best way to honour his unwavering commitment to the part of soldier, thief, and boxer Robert Prewitt was to disregard it almost completely.
Clift learned how to play the bugle to the standard required of military drills and underwent extensive boxing training, only for the bugle sounds heard in the final cut to be dubbed over in post-production, with a double standing in for the pugilistic sequences.
3. Joaquin Phoenix in I’m Still Here (Casey Affleck, 2010)
One of the most bizarre experiments in modern Hollywood history, Joaquin Phoenix decided to try and convince the world he’d retired from acting in order to pursue a new vocation as a rapper.
While some people fell for the ruse, there were just as many who were confident it would be revealed as a publicity stunt in the long run, which is exactly what happened. Phoenix grew out his hair and beard, turned down offers for film roles, and adopted a brand new persona for I’m Still Here, and it’s hard to figure out why.
Part documentary, part performance art piece, and part indulgence on the part of Phoenix and Casey Affleck, it’s difficult to discern who exactly I’m Still Here was supposed to have been made for other than those two, and the end result was sheer bemusement above all else.
2. Jared Leto in Morbius (Daniel Espinosa, 2022)
Jared Leto had already fired a warning shot about what happens when he’s hired in a comic book adaptation after his bizarre antics on Suicide Squad, but Sony hired him to headline Morbius nonetheless.
The Academy Award winner stars as Michael Morbius, a frail doctor with an extensive list of medical maladies who becomes a buff superhero after being imbued with magical bat blood or something. For the scenes where the title character requires crutches, Leto fully committed to the bit.
So much so, in fact, that whenever he needed to use the toilet, he had to be placed in a wheelchair and scurried across the soundstages by the production crew because he was taking so long doing it on crutches that it was regularly holding up the shooting schedule.
1. Ryan Gosling in The Lovely Bones (Peter Jackson, 2009)
Unfortunately, Ryan Gosling takes the crown for the most pointless example of method acting there’s ever been because he was basically fired for doing it.
After being cast in Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones, the handsome and chiselled star opted to pile on more than 60 pounds to convince as a schlub, despite failing to discuss his intentions with the director before he went ahead and did it.
When he turned up massively overweight, Jackson was less than impressed and ended up giving Gosling the boot, with Mark Wahlberg drafted in just days before the start of principal photography. In his own words, he was left “fat and unemployed” having gone on a huge weight-gain binge without approval.
