The definition of "method acting" has become so confused and so open to interpretation at this point that it's probably easier to just throw it out and start again. But here's a term that the world at large likes to bring into conversation at least once a week in order to sound hip, because what's cooler than an actor who starts acting like a fictional character in real life? "Nothing" is the answer, so don't bother trying to figure it out or anything. In the eyes of the movie-going public, method acting is the one gesture that an actor can make to prove that they like acting better and harder than all the other actors. I mean, think about Daniel-Day Lewis, who is perhaps the world's most famous and revered method actor ever. Three Best Actor Oscars, you say? I mean, if you're not willing to lose half your body weight to play a terminally ill patient on death row,
what kind of actor are you? Some people don't think that dropping weight constitutes as method acting, but the best definition I can find denotes that method acting consists of "techniques used by actors to create in themselves the thoughts and feelings of their characters," so dropping weight (or gaining weight, for that matter) certainly makes sense in that context. Same goes for when Robert De Niro drove a taxi to prep for
Taxi Driver. It's all method. Sometimes, though, your hard work won't find the appreciation it deserves, no matter how many taxis you drive or how much food you refuse to eat in the months leading up to production. In the cases of the 8 actors I've assembled here, the glory never quite came in the ways they probably expected it to: they were either ignored critically, or by the public at large, when they decided to get "serious" and go balls to the walls method...