” Bizarre Method Acting ” – Bizarre Buffet Podcast
Who are some famous Method Actors, and what exactly is Method Acting ? On this episode of Bizarre Buffet, the gang sits down to discuss the bizarre & fascinating world of Method Acting, the actors who practice it, and the complexities that are associated with such a severe form of performance!
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” Bizarre Method Acting ” – Episode Credits
Hosted By Mark Tauriello , Jen Wilson , & Marc Bluestein
Original Story & Episode Concept By Jen Wilson
Original Episode Art By Mark Tauriello
Episode Production By Marc Bluestein
” Bizarre Method Acting ” – Episode Show Notes
Question:
What do you know about method acting? What is your idea of what method acting is ?
What is method acting?
Method acting is a technique in which an actor aspires to be complete emotional ids such as Marlon Brando and Dustin Hoffman.
Konstantin Stanislavsky
A Russian Theatre Practitioner and founder of the Moscow Art Teacher.
His system cultivates what he calls the “art of experiencing” (with which he contrasts the “art of representation“).[2] It mobilises the actor’s conscious thought and will in order to activate other, less-controllable psychological processes—such as emotional experience and subconscious behaviour—sympathetically and indirectly.[3] In rehearsal, the actor searches for inner motives to justify action and the definition of what the character seeks to achieve at any given moment (a “task”).[4]
Many students branched off and found their own methods using the Stanislavsky system as their base.
Notable Method Actors:
- Marlon Brando
- Dustin Hoffman
- Daniel Day-Lewis
- Al Pacino
- Forrest Whitaker
- Charlize Theron
- Robert Deniro
- Christian Bale
- Jim Carey
- Hillary Swan
Heath Ledger
As part of his method acting, he locked himself away for weeks, keeping a diary which was subsequently shared with the documentary-makers behind 2012’s Too Young to Die.
The diary contained a wide array of manic musings, depicting hyenas, clowns, comic strips and Alex DeLearge from Stanley Kubrick‘s cult classic, A Clockwork Orange.
In the documentary, his dad Kim said Ledger isolated himself to get into the deranged psyche of the character.
He said: “He pretty well locked himself up in a hotel room for weeks. He galvanised the upcoming character. That was typical of Heath. He would do that. He liked to dive into his characters, but this time he really took it up a notch.”
Ledger also went all out physically, encouraging co-star Christian Bale [Batman] to actually hit him during an interrogation scene.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Bale recalled: “As you see in the movie, Batman starts beating the Joker and realises that this is not your ordinary foe. Because the more I beat him the more he enjoys it. The more I’m giving him satisfaction.
“Heath was behaving in a very similar fashion. He was kinda egging me on.
“I was saying, ‘You know what, I really don’t need to actually hit you. It’s going to look just as good if I don’t.’ And he’s going, ‘Go on. Go on. Go on….’
“He was slamming himself around, and there were tiled walls inside of that set which were cracked and dented from him hurling himself into them. His commitment was total.”
Daniel Day Lewis
For his role iconic role in My Left Foot, based on the autobiography of Irish writer, painter and cerebral palsy-sufferer Christy Brown, Day-Lewis learned to write and paint with his toes and spent 8 weeks in a cerebral palsy clinic in Dublin to truly get to grips with the condition.
His co-workers weren’t free of the method-acting burden, either: he refused to leave his wheelchair for the entire shoot, forcing people to carry him in and out of the car every day, and insisted on being spoon-fed food. “He’d call you by your film name, and you’d call him Christy. It was madness. You’d be feeding him, wheeling him around. During the entire film, I only saw him walking once,” Sheridan’s daughter, Kirsten, recalled.
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