Tom Hanks’ dismissive view of method acting
In recent years, “method acting” has developed an increasingly bad reputation—with even America’s dad himself, Tom Hanks, firing shots at the practice. We’ve all heard the stories of actors staying in character to absurd degrees even when the cameras aren’t rolling, and more often than not, this has led to the “method” being portrayed as a hindrance to production at best and a danger to cast and crew at worst.
What is method acting, though, and where did it originate? Well, way back in the 1930s, acting coach Lee Strasberg pioneered “the method”, which he said was based on techniques used by the Russian theatre actor and director Konstantin Stanislavski.
Strasberg’s approach was all about an actor doing relaxation exercises, which put them into a frame of mind and allowed their freedom of expression to thrive. For example, he would have them sit in a chair and think about an emotional experience from their childhood. As they described details of the memory – what they were wearing, what the weather was like – they would theoretically find themselves accessing the real emotion of that memory. Now, because they were dealing with remembered emotion from an actual experience, they could recreate it and reshape it with increased verisimilitude over and over.
While this approach to the craft makes a lot of sense – and many actors still practice it as part of their process – it’s not quite what people think of when they hear the words “method acting”. Instead, they roll their eyes at Jared Leto, sending the stars of Suicide Squad animal carcasses and using sex objects to inhabit the anarchic character of The Joker. They think of Daniel Day-Lewis being wheelchair-bound and spoon-fed by crew members when he played a man with cerebral palsy in My Left Foot. They despair at Jim Carrey, insisting he was Andy Kaufman while shooting Man on the Moon, even when interacting with Kaufman’s actual family members.
To be fair, these extreme methods have led to some truly incredible performances – but they’ve also led to a lot of aggravation behind the scenes. Indeed, in Gavin Edwards’ book The World According to Tom Hanks, the beloved actor was asked about staying in character for an entire shoot, and he scoffed at the idea. He chuckled, “Call me by my character’s name? Then what are you doing in the makeup trailer?”
Hanks was also asked if he channelled any traumatic memories while playing the stranded FedEx executive Chuck Noland in Cast Away. Once again, he joked, “You mean when I crossed my eyes and thought about my dog that died when I was seven? It didn’t work like that. It was just acting. That’s what they pay me to do.”
In the end, while Hanks’ attitude to “the method” was amusingly dismissive, it did actually speak to something important. You see, it’s been argued that the likes of Leto, Day-Lewis, and Carrey may have misunderstood the core philosophy of method acting. More specifically, when Stanislavski wrote in An Actor Prepares, “In our art, you must live the part every moment you are playing it, and every time,” he likely meant an actor should inhabit a part fully while on stage – not off it.
In truth, neither he nor Strasberg ever encouraged their students to live as a character when they weren’t treading the boards or plying their trade in front of a camera.
