Method Acting: Is It Really Worth It?

A Basic Lesson in Acting Methods 

Let’s just start with the basics. Originally, plays told the stories of gods and kings. Actors were very stiff and mechanical, delivering their lines like speeches rather than acting out monologues. In the late 19th century, theater began to change and plays started to be about everyday people. Instead of playing over-the-top and powerful gods, actors played people just like themselves and had to change their acting techniques. 

This brings us to Konstantin Stanislavsky who created the Stanislavsky System which encourages actors to live a role rather than perform it. 

So who is this guy?

Konstantin Stanislavsky was a Russian actor, producer, director, and founder of the Moscow Art Theatre. He began acting at 14 in his family-founded drama company. But, he wasn’t very confident in his acting abilities. However, he was analytical, philosophical, and a very prolific writer. He observed human behavior and employed those behaviors in acting.

So what’s his system?

Stanislavsky liked to observe human behavior and wanted his actors to be believable. So, his acting method is a series of training techniques designed to help actors create believable characters and develop natural performances. Since actors weren’t playing gods and kings anymore, these new stories required a new acting technique that displayed a character’s interior life rather than their grandness. 

Stanislavsky’s theories aren’t set in stone because he never stopped developing new ideas. He urged his actors to explore new techniques and his students from each generation learned and performed different exercises. Because of this, people look at his theories differently, but generally in two waves: Early Stanislavsky & Late Stanislavsky

In his early work, he was most concerned with creating living characters on stage. His techniques at the time focused almost entirely on psychological exercises. These included detailed table readings and encouraging his actors to experience the actions they were portraying on stage in their real lives. 

Near the end of his life, Stanislavsky argued for finding harmony between internal and external acting preparation. Ultimately, he believed the best acting connected an actor’s inner world with specific, performable actions on stage. 

Although his theories changed throughout his life, Stanislavsky had some core principles that make up his “System”: 

• The Magic “If”: This is probably the best-known Stanislavsky concept. He did not believe it was beneficial (or even possible) for an actor to truly believe that staged events were reality. Instead, he taught actors to put themselves in the characters' shoes and consider what they would do if they were in the character’s situation. The magic “if” makes the character’s motivations the same as the actor’s.

• Given Circumstances: These are all the specifics of the character or any facts you can get from the script. Given circumstances include everything from the character’s background to the time and place of the story and the structure of the staged world.

• Super-Objective: The super-objective is the character’s primary motivation in the play. This is the backbone of the character, the thing they want more than anything in the world. All of the actor’s objectives and actions on the stage should connect to this super-objective.

• Objective: Essentially, this answers the question, “What does the character want?” The best answer to that question involves a playable action. As Stanislavsky writes, “Every objective must carry in itself the germ of an action.”

• Physical Action: Stanislavsky taught that actors must build a character’s behavior through specific, concrete, performable actions. The best actions are achievable on the stage, within the world of the play. 

• Communion: Believable action in the play must be directed to the other actors, not the audience. When the actors communicate with one another through their actions it creates a more believable performance. They aren’t just talking to one another, they are acting with one another. 

• Emotional Memory: Stanislavsky encouraged actors to develop their ability to observe emotional reactions daily. The emotional memories developed off-stage provide the actor with strong feelings to draw from when their character experiences a similar emotion on stage. 

• Subtext: Subtext is the meaning behind the words on the page. To determine subtext, actors must have a rich imagination to determine why their character says or does something in the play. Subtext drives the performance of a play. “Spectators come to the theatre to hear the subtext,” Stanislavsky explains. “They can read the text at home.”

The benefit of Stanislavsky’s techniques is that they give actors a way of itemizing and talking about their process. Actors can analyze their characters and pull from the information they are given. 

The downside of his method is the concept of emotional memory. Emotional memory involves an actor activating the memory of a lived experience to help connect the actor to their character. Emotional memory (sometimes called emotional recall) can be applied at various intensities and has developed a dangerous reputation. 

While using emotional memory, some actors merge their personal lives with their characters’ lives in unhealthy ways. Stanislavsky student Lee Strasberg is often blamed for introducing this level of intensity to this method because of his insistence that an actor fully believes in their circumstances. This approach has come to be known as “method acting.”

Let’s go into Mr. Strasberg, shall we? 

As a young actor, Lee Strasberg was enamored with the great performances and curious about the source of their inspiration. 

The Moscow Art Theatre and its director Konstantin Stanislavsky visited New York City in 1923. The actors seemed to be experiencing real thoughts, desires, sensations, and emotions on stage. This was shocking to Americans including Lee Strasberg. When two actors from the Moscow Art Theatre opened the American Laboratory Theatre in New York City, Lee Strasberg joined and began his studies on acting and human nature. 

Strasberg went on to start the Group Theatre in 1931 with Harold Clurman and Cheryl Crawford. This group was an American version of the Moscow Art Theatre group and Strasberg used what he learned in the American Laboratory Theatre to teach his students. This included sensory exercises relaxation exercises, script analysis, actions, logic, improvisation, and subtext.

At the core of Strasberg’s work was the use of “affective memory” which made actors relive an event from his or her past and use those truthful feelings to perform a scene. The affective memory exercise, along with others he developed throughout his life, challenged actors to use experiences from his or her life to motivate a character’s emotional or physical behavior. For Strasberg, it was never enough to recreate emotion on stage – one had to relive it.

As his technique gained popularity, it was named Method Acting. 

What Exactly Is The Method To This Acting? 

The Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute trademarked the phrase The Method. This technique trains actors to inhabit the psyche of their characters to facilitate realistic behavior under imaginary circumstances. 

Some key techniques of Method Acting are as follows:

• Removing Tension

• Focus and Deliberateness

• Using Sense Memory: This is a process in which an actor draws on the memories of personal experiences to create a genuine response during a performance. 

• Identification and Replication: The ability to identify sensations and replicate them prompts an authentic response. The actor isn’t a puppet, but a writer or director who controls the scene and all their responses are natural. 

The last two techniques are the most controversial aspects of The Method. Some actors take it too far when they immerse themselves in their character’s environment. Before we get into these actors that take it too far, let’s just quickly go over the pros and cons of The Method. 

One giant upside of method acting is that it allows actors to create nuanced performances that the directors didn’t even see coming. This is particularly important for film and television due to the intimacy of close-up shots. Directors can’t direct every tiny facial expression, so actors have to be able to create natural, emotional reactions while they’re performing and those natural reactions can only occur if they know the character like they know themselves. The deliberation and focus that comes with this technique create intense and meaningful performances. 

The downside of The Method is that the characters need to be well-written. If the character is underdeveloped, there’s an opportunity for actors to play themselves or make creative decisions that they probably shouldn’t have. 

Method acting can also enable actors to behave rudely on set and create a hostile work environment for everyone around them. And I think we can all agree that’s what brings us all here today. 

These Actors Are Methoding! 

When I think of method acting, my mind automatically goes to all the stuff Jared Leto has done to his co-stars over the years, but many actors are weird about this method so I will go over all of those instead. 

Losing or gaining weight is often used for actors to connect with their roles. I have been hearing my entire life about how actors had to train and lose weight for a role and I thought it was so they looked better. But apparently, it’s so they can connect with the character resulting in a better performance. 

Christian Bale’s body looks significantly different in The Fighter, American Hustle, and the Batman trilogy. He also lost nearly 70 pounds for his role in The Machinist. His character in this movie was an insomniac, so Christian Bale only slept two hours a night while filming. I wonder what he did to prepare to play Jack Kelly in Newsies. 

Joaquin Phoenix told the Associated Press that he lost 52 pounds to play the Joker, which impacted his mental health. He told the publication, “Once you reach the target weight, everything changes.” He went on to say, “Like so much of what’s difficult is waking up every day and being obsessed over like 0.3 pounds. Right? And you really develop like a disorder. I mean, it’s wild.” 

He continued, “But I think the interesting thing for me is what I had expected and anticipated with the weight loss was these feelings of dissatisfaction, hunger, a certain kind of vulnerability, and a weakness. But what I didn’t anticipate was this feeling of kind of fluidity that I felt physically. I felt like I could move my body in ways that I hadn’t been able to before. And I think that really lent itself to some of the physical movement that started to emerge as an important part of the character.”

Natalie Portman trained for her role in Black Swan. Before filming, she reportedly trained several hours a day with a professional dancer in addition to swimming and cross-training. She also limited how much she ate, which led to her to lose 20 pounds. Natalie was actually quoted saying “I was barely eating, I was working 16 hours a day. I was almost method-acting without intending to. I do wonder now how people can do this kind of role when they have a family. It was more difficult than anything I’ve ever experienced before. I like to go home and be myself, but with this one, I didn’t get the chance. It didn’t leave me.” 

In January 2024, she told The Wall Street Journal that she never fully committed to method acting for a role. She told the publication that method acting is a luxury that women can’t afford because of the responsibility they have for their families. She said, “I don’t think that children or partners would be very understanding of, you know, me making everyone call me ‘Jackie Kennedy’ all the time.”

And you know, Natalie does have a point. But, even me, the biggest hater of method acting, can admit that biopics are probably the only time and place that immersive acting can be justified. 

For example, Forest Whitaker spent months preparing for the role of former Uganda president and dictator Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland. Not only did Forest Whitaker stay in character the entire time while filming, but he also lived in Uganda and met friends, family members, and victims of the real man he was playing. He also learned how to speak Swahili and part of his reasoning for staying in character full-time was so he would keep his dialect. 

Lady Gaga was fully committed to playing her character Patrizia Reggiani in House of Gucci. In an interview with British Vogue, she revealed she spent nine months speaking in an Italian accent and lived as her character day-to-day for a year and a half. She also admitted that she “had some psychological difficulty at one point towards the end of filming” as she started adjusting back to her normal life. 

We are finally at the point we have all been waiting for: Austin Butler and his portrayal of Elvis. I have to admit I haven’t watched Elvis and honestly, it's because of Austin Butler. Baz Luhrmann has created some of my favorite movies: The Great Gatsby, Moulin Rouge!, and Romeo + Juliet. But, since I’ve watched Austin Butler morph into Elvis in real life I can’t sit down and watch him play a campy caricature of Elvis. 

Sadly, Austin Butler isn’t the first actor to be embarrassingly immersed in their performance. 

Jim Carrey stayed in character while filming the Andy Kaufman biopic Man on the Moon. During the filming of this movie in 1998, Jim allowed a film crew to document his performance as Andy. This documentary Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond is on Netflix.

Jim starts this documentary by explaining what it felt like to get the call that he got the role. He was looking out at the ocean and thought, “What would Andy be doing?” 

He believed Andy would be speaking telepathically to people. Then dolphins came to the surface. Jim said, “Andy tapped me on the shoulder and said sit down, I’m filming my movie.” The rest was out of Jim’s control. It wasn’t obviously, but let’s go with that. 

For those of you who are unaware of who he is, Andy Kaufman is an American entertainer and performance artist. He is credited with introducing “cringe humor.” Basically, over the top, ridiculous humor where no one could tell if he was actually an asshole or just fully immersed in this rude character. He was on the show Taxi and also appeared on Saturday Night Live. 

He is an extremely famous and legendary comedian, although he wouldn’t necessarily call himself a comic. He said comedians promise to make jokes, but Andy promised to entertain the audience the best he can. 

Jim Carrey explains that he related to Andy because they both felt “the need to be special.” Jim explains that, just like everything wrong in someone’s life, this stems from childhood. Jim told a story about how his grandfather would scream at his father and make him feel horrible. Then his grandfather would leave and Jim would do an impression of him. He made everyone look at and pay attention to him while making light of a tense situation. 

However, when you examine the situation, you see that instead of dealing with the emotional and tense situation he was in, Jim created a character to distract everyone from their emotions, including his own. 

This character, all of his characters are called “Hyde.” Jim explains he has a “Hyde” that comes out when performing. Jim is not there, but Hyde is. Hyde is the performer. He is fun and loose, he doesn’t have the same problems as Jim so he can perform to his best ability all the time. 

But there’s a dark side to this. Jim explains, “When you create yourself to make it, you either have to let that creation go and accept being loved or hated for who you really are or kill who you really are and fall into your grave grasping onto a character you never were.” 

The documentary compares Jim/Andy situation to The Truman Show. The actor is something that is created to be watched. An actor isn’t the real person and one day the real person has to accept that. Jim explains that if you “create” yourself, it’s not Hollywood, it's Wall Street. The actor portrays themself as what people want them to be. But no one can live with that forever. You can’t “create” yourself without losing who you truly are. 

Andy Kaufman’s real-life girlfriend Lynne was behind the camera and shot behind-the-scenes footage in 1998. Universal didn’t want the footage released at the time because they knew everyone would think “Jim is an asshole.”

There are many famous people in this documentary who say Jim is acting so much like Andy (derogatory). Paul Giamatti, Carol Kane, and Danny Devito are among the notable names. These actors told the camera they weren’t working with Jim. They were working with Andy. They never even met Jim. 

While Andy Kaufman’s performance art character was controlling and took things too far, his character Tony Clifton probably caused the most frustration on set. Jim Carrey, as Tony Clifton, showed up to set driving with a paper bag over his head. He went into the makeup trailer and blasted music while all the other actors got their hair and makeup done. 

He went to Stephen Spielberg’s office to tell him his movies “don’t have to be so crowd-pleasing.” He was screaming in the courtyard of his office, of course, Stephen was not there, so he was just interrupting all the people in the offices. Tony Clifton also drank all the time. He was often passing out on set and being carried from his trailer to the shooting location. 

The director of Man on the Moon, Miloš Forman also directed great movies like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Hair. This man was so done with Tony Clifton. Jim explains that “the great director” had to grovel and beg him to film the scene as the DIRECTOR wanted it to be filmed. In the behind-the-scenes footage, Miloš says that the film crew is frustrated.

Two weeks into shooting Forman had a conversation with Jim and told him he hadn’t dealt with anyone like Tony. He’s exhausted and intimidated by Tony. Jim explained that they could fire Andy and Tony and then Jim do an impression of the two of them. 

For the sake of the movie, Forman admitted that he didn’t want to stop it, he just wanted to talk to Jim. The way Jim explains it, it sounds like Forman was doing a wellness check. He wanted to confirm that Jim was still in there somewhere and this was all for the movie and not some mental break Jim Carrey was having. 

As part of his cringe humor and in opposition to the feminist movement of the 1970s, Andy used misogyny in his comedy, telling women to stay in the kitchen and leave the work to the men. Andy argued that if they wanted equal rights, they should be able to wrestle men, I guess? 

Well, in 1982, Andy was wrestling a woman when professional wrestler Jerry Lawler jumped into the ring and showed him what it was like to wrestle someone twice his size. Andy ended up going to the hospital after being dropped on his head. Twice. 

While shooting the Man on the Moon, Jerry Lawler hated Jim Carrey. Jerry kept explaining that the feud (like all things in professional wrestling) was fake. Everything is preplanned and agreed on before they appear in front of an audience. Jim wasn’t doing that. 

He continued to act like the feud was real on and off camera. So much so that he refused to do the choreographed fight. Instead, he instigated Jerry Lawler and kept going until Lawler snapped. He attacked Jim and sent him to the hospital, just like Andy. 

Lawler tried to tell Jim Carrey that the feud was fake multiple times. He was trying to treat Jim like he treated Andy: as friends. But Jim refused, he kept acting like the feud was real even if it wasn’t real to Andy. Jim explains in the documentary, “As an actor, I thought in my head how far should I take it? How far would Andy take it?” Not this far because Jerry said that he and Andy had a mutual understanding and respect for each other so they wouldn’t get hurt. 

Jerry Lawler was not a fan of Jim during the filming of this movie, but the two continued to film together. Jerry and Andy appeared on Letterman together months after the fight happened in 1982. Andy wore a neckbrace and threatened to sue Jerry, so Jerry got up and slapped him. 

They recreate this scene in Man on the Moon and Jim instructed Jerry to really hit him. It was an extremely hard slap. Jim said, “I didn’t think he was trying to kill me. It was creativity. It doesn’t matter.” He also said the following quote about his beef with Jerry Lawler, “if it escalates into a broken nose, it escalated into a broken nose.” 

There is a silver lining in Andy “possessing” Jim Carrey. Andy’s family was on set of Man on the Moon and got to see Andy again. Andy’s brother explains that Jim embodies him and it’s like hanging out with Andy again. Jim addresses Andy’s father as “dad” and in response, Andy’s dad said he was proud of him. In the current interview, Jim explained that Andy’s family embraced him as if Andy was back. He said, “They know I’m not their son, but it’s almost like role-play therapy.” 

Andy’s estranged daughter also visited the set. He was a teenager when she was born and she was put up for adoption. She didn’t know her dad until he was in Taxi. Someone got in contact with her and revealed his identity. When this girl met Jim as Andy, it was her first time meeting her dad. The two talked about Andy and where he would be now. Jim gets emotional because he previously spoke with Lynne, Andy’s girlfriend, about where he would be now and she said he would be in heaven, taking care of the kids. 

At the end of the documentary, Jim says “Andy came back to make his movie and Andy did what Andy does.” The footage at the end shows the cast and crew supporting him, all wearing bags on their heads and crying. I know I said before that people were frustrated with Jim’s behavior, and that’s true they were fed up, but they also contributed to the immersive performance. 

Gerry Becker played Andy’s father in Man on the Moon. In the documentary, Gerry stayed in character and yelled at Jim (Andy) in the makeup trailer about being a disappointment. It was so intense and so real that the makeup artist started crying. She said, “It just reminds me of my dad.” 

But men tend to take things too far, don’t they? Let’s give some more examples. We’re not done yet! 

Sylvester Stallone was sent to the ICU while filming Rocky. He wanted the shot to look as realistic as possible so he asked Dolph Lundgren to punch him in the face and he was in the ICU for nine days. This one isn’t that serious, but it is hilarious. 

Jamie Dornan followed a woman in preparation to play a serial killer in The Fall. In 2015, he said in an interview that he “followed a woman off the train one day to see what it felt like to pursue someone like that. I really kept my distance…she got off a few stops earlier than I was planning so I said right, I have to commit to this. I followed her around a couple of street corners and then was like: what are you doing?” He went on to say “It felt kind of exciting, in a really sort of dirty way. I’m sort of not proud of myself. But I do honestly think I learned something from it because I’ve obviously never done any of that. It was intriguing and interesting to enter that process of ‘what are you following her for?’ and ‘what are you trying to find out?’”

In 2014, Aaron Eckhart told The Howard Stern Show that he attended a support group for parents who lost children in preparation for this role in the 2010 film Rabbit Hole. He pretended to have lost a child himself when he didn’t have any kids at all. He said “It’s rude. It’s very sensitive to go in there, of it is. I did the research. The gathering is very quiet. There are 10 people, couples. [Their children had passed away] very recently, it’s fresh. You’re sitting in sort of a circle. Then one person goes, then two, three, and then it gets to me. And by that point, you’re just so flushed that you just start going and giving the details of the story.” 

He revealed that he got wrapped up in the experience and had an emotional breakdown. He said “You really believe you just lost a child. You are as close to reality in that sense as possible. I don’t want to be rude to people who have lost a child, but yeah, you feel right there, you feel like your character.” He told Howard Stern that his coster Nicole Kidman did not choose to participate and he laughed, making a joke that she was in the Bahamas or somewhere. 

I would like to add that Nicole Kidman had three kids at the time. 

Dustin Hoffman improvised a slap with Meryl Streep in Kramer vs. Kramer. In a 2018 interview with The New York Times, Streep told the publication, “This is tricky because when you’re an actor, you’re in a scene, you have to feel free. I’m sure that I have inadvertently hurt people in physical scenes, but there’s a certain amount of forgiveness in that. But this was my first movie, and it was my first take in my first movie, and he just slapped me. And you see it in the movie. It was overstepping.” 

According to an unauthorized biography about Meryl Streep, the incident left crew members shocked and the slap left a red mark on her face. Crew members thought Streep would take them up with the Screen Actors Guild, but instead, she continued to act out the scene and they left it in the movie. Dustin Hoffman is gross so this is not surprising, but this illustrates my point that when horrible men become actors they will do horrible things under the guise of preparing for a role. 

Seems like You Shouldn’t Be Here 

I want to be clear that some roles can only be played by actors who truly connect with the characters. When these characters are not played by actors who truly connect with them, actors tend to go too far trying to relate. Let’s just take a quick look at two examples. 

Hilary Swank has been very outspoken about how someone who identifies as transgender should’ve played her role in Boys Don’t Cry. At the time of filming, she lost weight, bandaged her chest, and deepened her voice to portray the character in the most authentic way possible. 

Just wait. It gets worse. 

Jamie Foxx played Ray Charles in the 2004 biopic Ray and he followed a strict diet and lost 30 pounds to play the legendary musician. But that’s not all. The director of the movie, Taylor Hackford, asked Jamie Foxx to glue his eyes shut and wear prosthetic eyelids that resembled Ray Charles’ eyes. Jamie Foxx admitted that he was claustrophobic and suffered panic attacks at first, but was able to adapt. 

A Happy Medium 

Now enough about that weird method. Of course, there is a happy medium and of course, the technique was created by a woman. A woman named Stella Adler to be precise. Stella Adler was born in 1901 into one of the most famous acting families in New York. She gives Drew Barrymore. If she were alive today she would be sitting uncomfortably close to her guests on her talk show. 

The talent was truly in her blood. She was a renowned actress and extremely intelligent. That’s how she became one of the most influential acting teachers in American history. 

Like Strasberg, Adler was intrigued by the Stanislavsky System and attended classes at the American Laboratory Theatre. She was even invited to the Group Theatre. But in this group, she grew frustrated with Strasberg’s interpretation of Stanislavsky’s System. 

His method focused heavily on affective memory, but Adler, like most people, felt that affective memory was tortuous and annoying. To prove Strasberg wrong, she traveled to Paris and asked Stanislavsky himself. 

Stanislavsky clarified that his System was constantly changing and being updated. So much so that his former students who were teaching in America were working with an outdated version of the System that Stanislavsky hadn’t worked with in years. He moved away from affective memory altogether. 

Adler stayed in Paris to work closely with Stanislavsky so she could learn the most updated version of Stanislavsky’s System. She then took this experience and education back to America and began teaching her very own Stanislavsky-approved theories. 

Her technique doesn’t rely on memory but rather the actor’s ability to imagine a character’s world. She believed that actors who relied on personal, emotional memories actually limited their range. Her technique encourages actors to imagine an entire world for their characters to understand them. This world-building will create a compelling, more believable performance. 

Actors studying Adler’s theories would deliberately observe details in everyday life so they could create detailed and realistic mental images on stage. In other words, they observe actual people and combine those observations with imagination to create a truthful, but creative performance. 

These actors are not simply reliving what they experienced in their lives, but creating a whole life and world around their character’s experiences based on what they observe in real life. 

There’s more to Adler’s technique than just imagination it also involves discipline. Because she is an OG Nepo Baby, Adler believed acting was a lifestyle actors had to commit to. Discipline requires actors to maintain their health and strengthen any weak points that could limit their performance. This could vary from a quiet voice to a bad back. 

Her technique also includes text analysis. Adler taught her actors to analyze the text for key elements that dictate the character’s nature. Adler also emphasized education and the importance of understanding time periods, languages, fashion, and geographic locations which can all add to the world-building process. 

The final aspect of Adler’s technique is action. An action in Adler’s terms is something one character does to another to elicit a specific desired response. The actors must complete this action honestly and realistically. This action should further the play’s storyline in the most realistic way possible. 

There are pros and cons of this happy medium technique. This technique makes it easier for actors to immerse themselves in the character’s world. Actors tend to be well-equipped to tackle characters that are different from themselves. This technique is much less emotionally depleting than systems that rely on emotional memory. The trauma and pain actors must tap into to create a compelling performance take a toll on the body and the mind. 

When there is an option to observe everyday life and combine those observations with a little bit of imagination, why put yourself through the pain of remembering something so personal? 

However, mastering Adler’s method requires a significant time commitment. Actors have to notice and analyze the world around them at all times. They also have to maintain their overall health, including physical and mental. Actors also need to be educated and constantly study the scripts and elements of their projects. While this technique is less emotionally draining, the amount of script analysis and research required can make it more mentally draining. 

Marlon Brando is the most well-known Stella Adler student. Other icons who use her technique include Mark Ruffalo, Salma Hayek, Kate Mulgrew, and Diana Ross, among many others. 

Her method also reminds me a lot of Sydney Sweeney. In an interview with Story and Rain, she explains that she keeps a book and binder for each character she plays. She said, “I create an interactive timeline, journal, diary of their entire lives from the day they were born to the first page of the script.” She explained, “There are sections to each book. There’s a timeline of her whole life, a section for her relationships, her memories, and what her world looks like. And I have a section for where the script starts.” 

She even has a section for what happens between every scene for the time in between what is not shown or scripted. I think that’s an incredible method to tap into your character and I’m not just saying that because I’m a writer and I love a little creative exercise! 

I have ranted about these actors and their methods long enough. I will finally shut up about method acting. 

Is it worth it? 

I still don’t think so.

Let me know what you think!