10 Actors Who Took Method Acting Too Far
Cage ate a cockroach, Pattinson played with himself, and Jared Leto... Was Jared Leto.
We’ve all heard the stories - whether it’s screen legend Daniel Day Lewis spending months in character as Abraham Lincoln for beloved director Stephen Spielberg’s Lincoln, or at-best-inconsistent talent Jared Leto drinking olive oil to pack on the pounds and play John Lennon assassin Mark Chapman in the forgotten flop Chapter 27, actors put themselves through all manner of hell for a wide variety of roles.
Method acting as a process asks a lot of its devotees, not least the ability to stay in character long after the cameras have stopped rolling and they run the risk of being dubbed “w***y and pretentious”, as Outlaw King star Chris Pine once put it, by co-workers and crew alike.
Sometimes the process pays off big with performances lauded by critics, and sometimes merely committing to the bit isn’t enough to salvage a boring story or a sloppy screenplay and it’s all for naught. In any case, here are ten times that actors took their life in their hands - and in some cases, put the safety of those surrounding them in peril - via their insane commitment to method acting.
10. Val Kilmer - The Doors
Parodied in everything
from Wayne’s World 2 to The Simpsons, it can be hard to recall just how much Oliver
Stone’s Jim Morrison biopic The Doors influenced the nineties-era widespread
revival of the late sixties’ hippie/ burn out aesthetic. The film recreated the
counterculture of the time to a tee, prompting then-contemporary artists to
crib from their deceased forebearers and keep the crusty, marijuana-laced vibe
of the decade alive.
The film is anchored by a much mocked performance from Val Kilmer which, upon reinspection, is actually a lot more subtle and convincing than critical appraisal might have you presume. Kilmer went all out to get into character, learning over fifty songs from the band’s back catalogue in order to embody Morrison faithfully and actually singing for the film’s concert sequences.
However eventually the artiste took the masquerade too far, leading an embarrassed Kilmer to insist that a memo telling cast and crew to refer to him only as Jim Morrison when onset was only meant for “his people”, and not the production at large. Sure thing, Jimbo.