10 Actors Who Only Gave Great Performances Because They Got Drunk

10. Mary Elizabeth Winstead - Smashed

To play an alcoholic schoolteacher in James Ponsoldt's Smashed, Mary Elizabeth Winstead took a couple of interesting steps. To get her into the mind-set of a drunk on-set, Winstead would spin around in circles until she was dizzy, but to give her a sense of the real thing one night during the shoot, Winstead just plain decided to get drunk. Along with co-star Aaron Paul (playing Winstead's character's husband), Winstead went on a binge drinking session one evening and recorded the whole thing. She then watched it back later with Paul, to see how they interacted as a couple whilst absolutely trolleyed. The result is one of the great drunk performances of our time, and an oddly unheralded piece of acting work from an astonishingly talented actress.