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.
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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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