It is that time of the year, a time for reflection and mature deliberation. Which is just a fancy way of saying that I am catching up on my reading.
One of the books in my ever-growing pile is Nick Nolte’s memoir Rebel: My Life Outside the Lines . While I love the actor’s performances, the tone of the book comes across as that of a person rather too pleased with himself. Which is why I skipped to watching one of my favourite performances of his — Paul Mazursky’s Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986). Based on René Fauchois’ 1919 play Boudu Saved From Drowning, Nolte plays a tramp who changes the lives of an affluent dysfunctional family after he tries to drown himself in their swimming pool.
I was fascinated by the revelation that Nolte took method acting to new heights, or depths, depending on your point of view. To play the tramp convincingly, he ceased showering and ate dog food, much to the chagrin of co-star Bette Midler. Halle Berry also did not bathe for a few weeks to play a drug abuser in Jungle Fever (1991). It is well known that Christian Bale dropped 27 kilos to get his emaciated look in The Machinist (2004) and that Adrien Brody lost some 13 kilos to play a starved Jewish musician in The Pianist (2002), for which he won the ultimate prize – an Oscar for best actor.
Perhaps the most famous method actor is Daniel Day-Lewis. For his role in the 1692-set The Crucible (1996), he built the house that his character lived in from scratch and actually lived in it during the shoot. For Gangs of New York (2002), he learnt the craft of butchery from a British butcher and won a BAFTA for his pains; and for Lincoln (2012), he lived and breathed the character on and off set and won the best actor Oscar. For Phantom Thread , where Day-Lewis played a couturier, he learnt how to sew and, to preserve the spontaneity of their first scene together, he made sure that he had not laid eyes on co-star Vicky Krieps beforehand.
No discussion of method acting is complete without the oft-repeated tale from the sets of Marathon Man (1976). Dustin Hoffman played a character that hadn’t had much sleep and supposedly stayed awake for 72 hours before that particular scene. His co-star, the legendary Laurence Olivier, told him, “Why not try acting? It’s much easier.” It is a story that haunted Hoffman over the years, but he has denied it time and again. Finally, in 2004, he revealed that he was going through a divorce and his staying awake was due to excessive partying. As we all know, these days Hoffman has far more serious accusations against him than the trivial matter of method acting.
