10 Subtle Instances Of Method Acting You Never Even Knew About

2. Sean Penn Spent Six Months Learning To Play Jazz Guitar For Sweet And Lowdown

A lot of the time, when an actor lacking musical ability is cast in a musical role, a director will opt to overdub their performance in post-production. That's to say, actors get brand new voices or are infused with the ability to play an instrument that they can't actually play in real life. Sean Penn knew this when he was cast in Woody Allen's horribly underrated movie Sweet And Lowdown, so he decided to learn how to be great at jazz guitar.

This might not seem that impressive at first, given how lots of actors have learned how to play instruments on a basic level when they find themselves in the kinds of roles like Penn did here, but on this occassion the actor wanted to do it properly, so he became great at playing jazz guitar instead. Coached by Howard Alden, an accomplished jazz guitarist if there ever was one, Penn trained for six months to accomplish his goal.

In the final cut of the movie, though, Penn's own playing was removed and overdubbed with Alden's own, which is actually the reason as to why this instance gets a place on the list. Penn dedicated himself to learning jazz guitar when he didn't really need to - not many people would have noticed if he hadn't, given that the director could have obscured his inability with careful editing. It's just nice to know that Penn could play, even if we didn't get to hear it.