Brian Timoney’s World of Acting Show

Episode 22: What is Method Acting?

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One man – One mission: To rid the world of low-standard and mediocre acting, once and for all.

Brian Timoney, the world’s leading authority on Method Acting, brings you powerful, impactful, volcanic acting and ‘business of acting’ techniques in his special Acting Podcasts.

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Brian: Hi everyone, and welcome onto today’s show – and I’m joined by Joe, Joe Ferrera. Welcome, Joe!

Joe: Well, thank you for having me, Brian. It’s lovely to be here, as usual. Thank you.

Brian: Great! Well, today we’re going to be talking about Method Acting – and this is something that we both know a lot about, Joe, it’s fair to say.

Joe: Yes, we do, yes.

Brian: Now, the reason why I talk about this is that there’s always things in the press about what they think Method Acting is – right?

Joe: Yes.

Brian: Not so long ago, Shia LaBeouf, who’s a great actor, but he removed a tooth, basically, to play a role…

Joe: Yes, I did read about that, yes.

Brian: …and they called it Method Acting. There’s been reports as well of people like, for example, Daniel Day-Lewis, another brilliant actor, staying in character 24/7 in order to play roles, and Robert De Niro becoming a taxi driver in order to play a

www.worldofacting.com taxi driver, or a boxer. So, there’re all these different examples. Some are varying in extremity. I think the tooth-pulling one is my favourite.

Joe: I think the tooth-pulling one has to be – we’ll have to really sort of dissect that and the thought process behind that, you know, yes, because there is something there that doesn’t really ring true to me and my ideas and feelings and concepts and thoughts about Method Acting, you know? Whereas the others seem to be so much more logical and so much more methodical in their approach: Daniel Day-Lewis staying in character and De Niro training like a boxer to play a boxer. Actually we had an example of Jake Gyllenhaal doing that in Southpaw as well; he really went after it.

Brian: Completely, yes.

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Joe: So, we’ve got some good examples

Brian: Yes. These examples – what gets bandied around the media about “that is what Method Acting is”, and actually there’s some people who carry out some of these extreme approaches, who are not even Method actors but they get called Method because people think that’s what Method Acting is. So, I think it’s important that we redress it, Joe, right?

Joe: Yes; let’s just try and redress this, yes.

Brian: Pulling out a tooth, or staying in character 24/7, or going and actually doing the job for real really isn’t Method Acting.

Joe: No.

Brian: But we will talk – like you’ve alluded to – that there are some aspects of what those actors did, a little less severe than the tooth-pulling one, that actually do make a lot of logical sense and there’s a reason why they’re doing it. But, however, none of this was laid out by the inventor, if you like, of Method Acting, Lee Strasberg. He didn’t say you had to go and lose a lot of weight or gain a lot of weight, or pull a tooth out in order to be a Method actor. It’s a completely different ethos and thinking behind it. And I think the first thing to think about or remember about the Method is it is a process.

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Joe: It is a process.

Brian: It’s called Method Acting for a reason. So, there is a process that an actor goes through of various exercises that are constructed; they go through it in a logical sequence, in order to get actors to where they need to be quicker.

Joe: Yes – which came stemming from an actor taking 20 years to build a career and being able to trust his instrument to the point – you know, Lee and some of the great acting coaches, including going back to Stanislavski, saw that actors started to become much, much better the further down their career. And basically they took what these great actors have learned over 20/25 years, towards the end of their career or towards a middle part of their career where they’d had the confidence and the trust in their instrument to be able to go after things, and condensed that and said, ‘Look; why wait all that time? Why suffer through all those bad shows when you can condense that and bring it – start early, start quickly with the right technique and the right methodology.’ And stemming back to the productions of the group theatre, where I remember distinctly that they put on a play that was set in a hospital, in a theatre, and all of the actors went and watched what doctors did and how they behaved. That seems to me very logical behaviour – and if you’re Robert de Niro and you’re going to play Jake LaMotta, and you want to play him to the best of your ability; or if you’re Daniel Day- Lewis and you’re going to play Abraham Lincoln, the weight of those two people and their history, it weighs heavy on me. If somebody wants to play me, or if somebody’s going to play you, Brian, we’d want them to do what? To be as authentic as they can in their representation, you know?

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Brian: Yes, you’d want them to know you, yes.

Joe: Within reason of course – there’s also artistic license as well. But if you’re going to do that, I’d want to be the best me that I was going to play, or the best other person. So that approach/Method seems to have been misconstrued in the media – again. They’re looking for something that really isn’t there, you know. I’m sure there are actors that are doing sort of crazy stuff out there and artists who are doing extreme artistic choices, and that doesn’t necessarily make them a good artist or a great method actor, because it really stems from us wanting to be really good at

www.worldofacting.com something and really condensing the technique and being able to bring a certain artistry as early as we can to our work. That’s my idea of Method Acting.

Brian: Yes; I totally agree with what you’re saying. I think that when we really look at what the Method is – and I think you hit the nail on the head when you said that when Stanislavski, and later Lee Strasburg, developed the Method, it was out of conversations with great actors.

Joe: With great actors!

Brian: So I’ve got a theory about this, Joe: I actually think that all great actors are Method actors.

Joe: Totally, yes.

Brian: Because what people don’t realise, actually, a lot of people don’t realise, is that when the Method was formed, it was formed out of conversations with great actors.

Joe: Yes.

Brian: So it wasn’t dreamt up by a Lee Strasburg or a Stanislavski in a dark room: ‘It sounds like a wicked idea!’

Joe: Yes, like, ‘Let’s put it together parts and make an auto-acting robot.’ It wasn’t. It stemmed from deep conversations with actors who had experienced their problems and were willing to share.

Brian: And very experienced actors of the day that were very good actors – people like Eleonora Duse, who’s a famous Italian actress. And she explained, actually – it’s quite an interesting story, this because she explained the fact that the way that she worked was actually working with her life, her background, her experiences in order to fuel the experiences of the character. And I thought that was a big turnaround. But what is interesting is that nowadays, sometimes the Method gets vilified for the fact that actors use their own experiences in order to fuel the scene, create the scene, but actually, all we’re doing is doing what Lee Strasburg said: ‘Doing what great actors have always done.’ It’s not like we’re reinventing the wheel. This is actually what they do.

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Joe: Absolutely, yes.

Brian: But putting it into a methodology, putting it into a way so that, as you said, actors can get there quicker – so instead of spending 40/50 years working these things out, the Method condensed it so that new actors getting their hands on acting for the first time can get to that point much quicker.

Joe: Yes – and with, hopefully, less heartache in terms of the learning curve. I mean, you’re always going to encounter problems in terms of problems that need solving as an actor, where you may be given a technical note from a director and you haven’t experienced that technique in terms of it’s a new camera or something like that, or a new stage setting, and the director’s saying, ‘Listen; I need you to come down that thing and say the line in that way, and try and…’ – and that’s going to give you a problem. And you need to be able to trust your instrument enough – and when we talk about “our instrument”, that’s what we use, is ourselves; that is our instrument – that you need to be able to call on that, without all the heartache and the pain of not knowing. And the Method Acting technique gives you a set of tools, as many as can be. We can’t give you every single thing because life’s going to throw different problems at us. You know, I’ve found more recently, working on the green screen, if I didn’t have my sense memory/ sense experience and being able to generate fear and things from totally imaginary – you can’t see these things! You know, they’re going to paint in all these pterodactyls chasing you and all that, and you’re having to generate the real fear, and you have to be able to be in your instrument and, in inverted commas here, guys, “pretend”! You’re going to have to really pretend, for real, that you’re being chased. And I think that Method Acting really opens your instrument up, to be able to sit in a studio that’s closed off – actually you’re surrounded by a green screen – and start to generate real, authentic emotion from your senses. And that’s all that we can really ask for.

Brian: Going back even to Stanislavski’s day, one of the big crusades that he was on really was how does an actor become inspired at will? Given your own circumstances you’re talking about here, being on a green screen where there’s nothing there…

Joe: There’s nothing! [laughs] There’s nothing!

Brian: There’s nothing inspiring in the room!

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Joe: No, there isn’t, no.

Brian: And you have to be able to tap into yourself in order to do that. And actually it’s funny, because this does crack me up, Joe, because there’s different schools of thought when it comes to acting – whether effective memory is really what we’re talking about here, or emotional memory: should it be used? Is it right to use your own emotions? And I’m thinking, well, invariably, if we are tapping in and become inspired at anything, what we’re actually doing is tapping into that. And actually what the Method does is it shows you how to do it deliberately, rather than it being a hit- and-miss event, or, ‘Will I be able to get emotional or not?’ You know, this is a sure- fire way of making sure that you know how it happens. And I actually think, as a professional, you’ve got a duty to be able to do it.

Joe: You’ve got a duty, absolutely.

Brian: Because you know what? What other profession could you be in where somebody turns up and they’re not sure whether they can do the job? It’s like Meryl Streep or Dustin Hoffman and Philip Seymour Hoffman – all these guys, they don’t turn up and experiment on the day when they’re getting paid 10 million bucks!

Joe: No, they don’t. They don’t.

Brian: They come in and they know how to do it already. They’ve trained themselves in order to do.

Joe: And even if it’s somebody you might not associate immediately with Method Acting – say like an Anthony Hopkins, who came from a different background, still, his methodology, his preparation is second to none! Or Samuel L. Jackson – his preparation is second to none; he just literally says, ‘This is my job. I go into the shed, into my workshop, and I learn my lines and I create a character and I do my preparation, because that’s what I’m paid to do.’ And most of the time it’s pretty mundane, isn’t it, Brian?

Brian: Yes.

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Joe: We’re just talking about really ordinary things – you know, preparing your lines, preparing your emotional integrity in terms of like what you believe the needs of the character are, what you believe the circumstances are, what are the fixed givens – taking those and then applying them to yourself and saying, ‘Oh, you know what? I think at this point they’re going to respond, and I would like you to be tearfully or from a place of anger’ and you have to be able to generate that. You know, the other actor may not be giving you that. You may be in a room with a green screen and somebody’s off-camera saying, ‘I don’t love you anymore,’ and you’ve got to respond to that!

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Brian: And all you’ve got to depend on is you in that room.

Joe: Is you, yes.

Brian: You don’t have another actor; you don’t have anything to stimulate, so you have to be able to do that. Now, going back to something you mentioned earlier on, which was about Daniel Day-Lewis and Robert De Niro and some of these approaches that are being termed Method, that actually half came from a place of Method because I guess the one we’re looking at, what they’ve done in the past is that they’ve sort of taken an immersive approach, and in the Method we are encouraged to really do our research, to really go in deep about what is this person about? and really research them fully.

Joe: Yes.

Brian: And, like you said, if you’ve got the chance, why not? And they’re in the situation where why not? I saw an interview with Daniel Day-Lewis, who doesn’t often talk about his work, but he, in this rare interview, did talk about his approach to things. And he was questioned about this fact that he seems to stay in character the whole time while they’re filming. There was a story when he was playing the Abraham Lincoln role, that he stayed as Abraham Lincoln when he was speaking to the director – so why would he do that? And the response he gave was very interesting: he said, ‘Look; I worked out quite quickly when I was going on set as a young actor that, for me, the conversations away from the filming – hanging out with the crew and chatting and discussing – were extremely tiring for me, and distracting. At any given time during the day, you’re asked to switch it on and be able to play that role.’ And he said, ‘I find it less onerous or less tiring to stay in character the whole

www.worldofacting.com time, and then I don’t need to think about it; I don’t need to go through a big process to be able to get there again during different points of the day.

Joe: And his instrument is free to go into the demands made of him for the takes and for the set and from the director. He’s not having to do a three-step where he’s going, ‘Okay, let me get my voice going, let me get my instrument going. Number one: let me get my voice going. Number two: let me get my body warmed up. Number three: okay, I’m ready for action.’ No! You know, these are expensive days. Even if he’s working with Spielberg and they have all the money in the world – they don’t. you know, they have a limited time on the set, everything’s expensive – and he’s saying, ‘Look; I’m going to try and be as prepared, when action is called, as I can be’ – so that giving yourself an opportunity for the creative to come through, isn’t it?

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Brian: Yes.

Joe: Because if you’ve got all those other three obstacles to warm up first, you’ve already spent an hour maybe, or five or ten or twelve takes further down the line; it’s a long time.

Brian: Yes, and I think you can do this – whether you take an approach like he did, and did it the whole time, which maybe some directors and crews, they’ll find that a bit weird, but I think that you can do that anyway. You can maintain your concentration; you don’t need to be in conversations with people the whole time when you’re on set – you can actually take yourself off and just keep remembering that you’re going to be going on to play a part. You know what I mean?

Joe: Yes!

Brian: I know that sounds crazy but actually that can happen; you can get caught up with people, other actors…

Joe: Yes – other actors in the makeup, in the coffee and all of that. You still need to be a human being, and you’re going to eat and you’re going to share experiences. But you also have got to remember that the journey of your character is – and let’s just pause for a minute, one second here: it’s not that Daniel Day-Lewis isn’t doing anything right, is he, because he’s only won three Oscars! So the industry

www.worldofacting.com recognises his integrity; they recognise his approach to the work; they recognise how sincere and how honest he is about his approach – because why would you reward him with that? So it must mean that if we use that – and Meryl Streep as well – if we use those brilliant examples, they must be doing something right in their approach, so why shouldn’t we borrow from those that are doing something right? And let those ones that are saying, ‘Oh, this and that’ in the media, or, ‘It’s this/it’s that’ – it is what it is. You have to go and take the approach you need. Method Acting gives me, I think, the authenticity that I need on set or on stage.

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Brian: I think that’s the key word, isn’t it, authenticity.

Joe: Yes.

Brian: What I’ve found is that actors who are attracted to the Method, are really attracted to the fact…

Joe: Keen to be involved in that sort of idea – of being authentic.

Brian: And bringing your own authenticity, to make the character authentic.

Joe: Bringing your own, yes.

Brian: And it’s making it real. Because one of the things that attracted me to the Method when I first started looking at it, it’s a kind of reality where it looks so real that people forget they’re watching acting…

Joe: Yes, absolutely.

Brian: You get so involved – because they’re actually going through it. One of the key things to remember, I think, in Method as well is that a lot of the time the actors are reliving a living event; they’re making themselves go through it again. And when you do that, you really see a level of believability that’s really deep.

Joe: That’s deep. And remember that that is part of what we’re in because it’s entertainment as well. It’s making people go on a journey through your experience – and what’s more thrilling than that? Through your own endeavours, you can create a world that people forget themselves and they just forget for two and a half hours or

www.worldofacting.com two hours their problems outside, and it’s raining, or they’ve got this or that. They can be just taken on a journey. And what greater gift can you give? That’s my feeling.

Brian: And duty – because people pay their money to come and watch you.

Joe: That's right – their hard-earned money.

Brian: It’s your duty, I think; you’ve actually got to give them as much as you can as an actor.

Joe: Yes. And it’s not cheap to go to the theatre, especially the theatre now.

Brian: Theatre in the West End is not, you’re right.

Joe: Yes, and even to the cinema now – so, yes, absolutely.

Brian: So, here’s something else, Joe: we’re coming up to Christmas – it’s not long now.

Joe: No, it won’t be, yes.

Brian: I can’t believe how rapidly it’s coming up on us. And if there are people out there who are thinking, ‘I want to know more about Method Acting’, I thought I’d put them out of their misery.

Joe: Please do.

Brian: Because, as you know, I wrote a book on method acting. It’s called The Ultimate Guide to Method Acting. And basically I put it together really for my own students, so when I was taking them through the course, everything that I knew about the Method was put into a book so that they could refer back to it, and everything we’ve talked about, and a lot more, is in there. So if you’re interested in learning more about Method Acting, you can go to this website: methodactingbook.com, and you can go there and give yourself a Christmas present – and get the Method Acting book.

Joe: Yes, why not? Absolutely!

Brian: So, there we go!

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Joe: Yes; it’s not as heavy as all those mince pies you’re going to eat – and you might actually learn something. It might be good for your acting.

Brian: Exactly, yes. Maybe get a friend to buy it for you for Christmas.

Joe: Yes, exactly – put it in as a request: secret Santa!

Brian: Exactly! Okay, that’s the end of the show – and I look forward to speaking to you on the next one.

Joe: Yes. Thank you for your time.

You’ve been listening to Brian Timoney’s World of Acting. For a full transcript of today’s show, go to www.worldofacting.com. We’ll see you next time.

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