5. Marlon Brando - The Men
No list about getting into character in extreme ways or method acting would be complete, or worth a grain of salt, without featuring the Granddaddy of method; Marlon Brando. For the 1950 anti war film The Men, Brando played a paralyzed war vet who tries to adjust to the world without the use of his limbs. This was his onscreen debut that treated the world to the birth of a star with an incredibly realistic performance of such a harrowing, anti war sentiment laden film. At the time, this kind of film was a shocking watch. An acting student of Lee Strasberg, the revolutionary founding father of method acting (who also trained Paul Newman, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, James Dean, Dustin Hoffman and Jack Nicholson to name a few), Brando popularized 'the method' in the 50s and went on to use it throughout his career, forever the cornerstone and epitome of being at one with your character. For this his first film, he prepared for it by reportedly lying in bed for a month in a veterans' hospital. Immobilized and unable to look himself, Brando started a trend that has since stretched itself out across the very best of the acting world.