Nowadays, when people think of method acting, names like Lady Gaga and Jared Leto are often brought up. This is because there are plenty of news reports about those actors speaking out about the lengths they go to inhabit the character they portray on screen, often doing things that many think are a bit, uh, extreme. This has led to method acting getting a bad reputation amongst film fans, with folks thinking that method actors are just being difficult for the sake of being difficult. Andrew Garfield is here to say that’s not correct and the people who are misusing method acting as an excuse for being a dick on set are giving the practice a bad name.
Speaking on the WTF Podcast, Andrew Garfield was asked to clear up common misconceptions about method acting. Again, this is often defined as the practice that some actors use to fully inhabit their character on screen and off during the time of production. This is something Garfield has utilized in the past and he wants everyone to know that it’s a valid way to approach a role.
“There’s been a lot of misconceptions around what method acting is, I think,” Garfield said. “It’s not about being an asshole to everyone on set. It’s actually just about living truthfully under imagined circumstances, and being really nice to the crew simultaneously, and being a normal human being, and being able to drop it when you need to, and staying in it when you want to stay in it.”
He added, “I’m kind of bothered by this idea that ‘method acting’s fucking bullshit.’ No, I don’t think you know what method acting is if you’re calling it bullshit. Or you just worked with someone who claims to be a method actor that isn’t actually acting the method at all. And it’s also very private. I think the process of creating — I don’t want people to see the fucking pipes of my toilet. I don’t want them to see how I’m making the sausage.”
To help prove his point, Garfield talked about his experience during the production of the Martin Scorsese film, “Silence.” While working on that film, to fully take on the role of a priest, Garfield was celibate and often used fasting to help his performance.
“I had an incredibly spiritual experience,” he explained. “I did a bunch of spiritual practices every day, I created new rituals for myself. I was celibate for six months and fasting a lot because me and Adam [Driver] had to lose a bunch of weight anyway.”
Garfield added, “I had some pretty wild, trippy experiences from starving myself of sex and food for that period of time.”
So, even if folks like Jared Leto are reportedly sending dead animals and pretending to have a disability on set to put him in the right mindset, there are other folks like Andrew Garfield who think method acting can be a tool that doesn’t have to negatively affect everyone else.
You can hear the full discussion below: