I just read the term somewhere and have read all the wikipedia stuff, multiple articles, reddit posts, discussions, etc, but I just don’t understand what method acting is? What else can actually be there? Don’t all actors try to feel pain when they’re in a role where they have to act hurt?
I am not really looking for the history behind it, but maybe an example of a scene and the different ways as to how a method actor would approach it vs how a normal actor would approach it.
Thanks!
Edit – I know this is not the most scientific or complex phenomenon to understand, but still.
In: Other
To put it as simply as possible. A lot of method actors don’t break camera when the cameras stop rolling. An example would be Daniel Day Lewis as Lincoln. He asked everyone on set to refer to him as “Mr.President” including Spielberg. When George Clooney was making Ocean’s 11 he did t have anyone on set refer to him as Danny Ocean except for when they were filming a scene.
Method acting involves knowing all the little details about a character so that the actor in essence becomes the character, so even if they were to improvise a scene they would immediately know what the character would do in any given situation.
> Don’t all actors try to feel pain when they’re in a role where they have to act hurt?
Way back in time there were predefined gestures and actions to convey any given emotion. When you felt distress you would do exactly this action to show it, confused then you do exactly this to convey confusion etc. Actors up to about the late 1800s did not try to feel the emotions they were having in the script, they played an exact set of motions and facial expressions.
Method acting is actually trying to feel the exact emotion you are trying to portray and THEN act naturally upon that.
This story has been verified as being _not true_ but like all good fiction, it is a made-up story that conveys a deeper truth.
So, the story goes, they’re filming the movie “Marathon Man”. Dustin Hoffman, probably the most method actor of his generation, is working with Sir Laurence Olivier, commonly known as the Greatest Actor Of The Twentieth Century. They’re about to film the scene after the dentist (Olivier) has tortured the student (Hoffman) all night.
Hoffman realized that the true method actor would literally torture himself all night to get in the proper frame of mind to film the scene. So that’s what he did — he stayed up all night, literally banging his head against the wall, burning himself with cigarettes, and (in some versions of the story), taking more drugs than he was used to taking.
Hoffman showed up on the set the next day looking like a man who had been tortured all night. Laurence Olivier took one look at him and in genuine concern said “My dear boy, you look terrible! Are you quite all right?”
Hoffman managed to croak out an explanation of method acting, really needing to explore what the character is going through, experiencing his feelings, and so on.
Olivier listened in politeness and when Hoffman was finished, said “My dear boy… why don’t you try *acting*? It’s so much easier.”
>>Don’t all actors try to feel pain when they’re in a role where they have to act hurt?
That wasn’t always the way. Before amplification technology, in theaters or open-air amphitheaters, it was more important to be heard in the back row.
Take the scene of Hamlet wondering whether to kill himself or not kill himself, that is the question. This, obviously, is an intensely personal moment, something that would be thought silently to himself, or spoken in a hushed whisper. But an actor before the 20th century would be forced to declaim “TO BE OR NOT TO BE THAT IS THE QUESTION” as loudly as possible to ensure everyone in the audience heard him. Also, so they could be seen in the balcony, actors had a stock of gestures they would perform to go with each emotion. So “TO BE OR NOT TO BE” would be accompanied by the actor holding the back of his hand to his forehead to indicate sadness to the people upstairs.
To get an idea of what this stage style of acting looked like, watch some old silent films. When you see a silent film actor hold his hand up to his forehead and pretend to swoon, or make a “tearing his hair out” gesture, he’s employing stage acting techniques to get his message across on a silent film.
Then, when amplification came to theaters (and sound came to movies), the profession of acting gained the freedom to change. Actors could now *whisper* the line, “To be or not to to be, that is the question”, making it more meaningful by being more intimate. And soon, the whole question of what it meant to “act” began to change. Actors realized that their performances could now be more internal than external, and that required new techniques.
Watch the movie “The Public Enemy (1931)”. Donald Cook, who plays James Cagney’s older brother, is clearly still acting in the exaggerated silent movie style. Cagney, on the other hand, wowed audiences and critics by acting in a completely new, more naturalistic style.
So it sounds like you get method acting, I’m going to add one example — say there’s a scene where an actor needs to cry.
THE METHOD would say you should try to get in the mindset of that character at that moment in that scenario and cry as that character cried, speak as that character would speak.
INSTEAD: you could just think about the time your dog died and cry about that, then deliver your lines remembering other times you were very sad and mimicking those emotions and sounds. (Because will the audience ever know that you were just making crying sounds and not actually sad? If you sounded just like a sad person, then quite possibly not!)
^(Asking for what the opposite of a style is is kind of hard; it’s like saying what’s the opposite of “Waltz” anti-waltz? samba? swing?)
As a contrast, consider “Character Actor” performances; think of Will Ferrell in Elf, The Wicked Witch in Wizard of Oz, pretty much any character in James Bond or Austin Powers, Some Gary Oldman roles (5th element), etc. There are some great performances where “truly becoming exactly what the character would feel in this scenario” isn’t the right idea — if you’re a mustache twirling villain chew the scenery and be a villain, if you’re playing a character for laughs just play the role for laughs. etc.
The Opposite of method acting is typecast acting. Especially the kind of stuff you see in pre-modern theater traditions like Comedia d’elle Arte If you played Pierrot or Harlequin – you played within the tradition. You didn’t scrutinize the script (because before the Gutenberg Press the ‘script’ was a literal manuscript, that’s even if there was one, many plays were learned and improvised based on some repeating basic premises) looking for your character’s motivation, looking for the little clues about the dialogue that suggested where she was born, what her fears are etc. etc. You just played the role the way you were told and if the audience liked it, you kept going with it.
We still see this today. Arnold Schwarzenegger is great, but he’s not a method actor. He’s the opposite – he plays Arnold Schwarzenegger – no matter what he’s called no matter what nationality he has in the script, no matter his job: he plays Arnie. That’s not method acting. But also there’s a reason why he was at one point the highest paid actor in the world.
Method acting is so often stereotyped as never breaking character instead of the Stanislavski, Meisner etc. methods.
I mean let’s be honest here, if method acting was what we think it is no director would ever work with a method actor – “hey we need another take, you need to come into her space a little more” the actor wouldn’t be like “okay like this far?” they’d wouldn’t’ be like “my character wouldn’t do that and I have to stay in character. They’d be like “oh my gosh, why are there all these lights and camera crew all around me? What is going on!?”. **Method Actors still are actors and aware of the artifice of their profession.**
Method Acting principally revolves around what Stanislavski called the ‘Magic If’ – if you were that tree, what would you feel? You would feel the wind rustling through your leaves, you’d feel your height, the strength, you’d feel the coolness of the soil etc. etc. This sounds abstract, but if you’re trying to play a innocent man who was coerced into a confession like Daniel Day-Lewis, learning about this, researching this can go a long way to helping you find the right characterization – the way that man would walk, talk, his posture, his hands… everything about the man who had gone through that ordeal. Day-Lewis did go pretty far with it, before filming began he spent 3 days and nights in a jail cell getting a simulation of the treatment of his character – broken sleep, hours of interrogations… after all that the Magic If was no longer a ‘If’ he had an absolute understanding of what his character had been through. In fact **even if he chose to constantly break character between takes – the research of that ordeal would have been invaluable in his conscious choices about how to play the role scene by scene**
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