Physical transformations are very common among method actors. They lose and gain a lot of weight to look like the character they envision.
But sometimes some actors push themselves too far, physically and psychologically, that it ends up giving us roles that are remembered for decades. Some actors crawl into a character’s skin so much so that they take in all the mental and physical disabilities and quirkiness that comes with the role.
Here are some actors can took the technique a bit too far, however, pushing the limits of both themselves and those around them.
Robert De Niro – Cape Fear
To pull off the look of psychotic Max Cady, De Niro paid thousands of dollars to grind his teeth down. That’s right! Grind his teeth. He got several vegetable dye tattoos made all over his body and he also spent a lot of his time studying and researching on sex offenders. He even left behind creepy messages as Cady on Scorsese’s answering machine to freak him out.
Nicolas Cage – Birdy
This actor just doesn’t seem to understand the concept of low-key. Going eccentric over film roles has helped him bag the unofficial title of being the craziest actor in Hollywood. He feels that hints of nuttiness help develop the performance and the character and we can’t disagree. If losing his sh*t meant brilliant performances such as the role of a Vietnamese veteran from ‘Birdy’, we actually think that being a flip could result in greatness. For this character he required several facial injuries, so Nicolas decided to get 4 of his teeth extracted; he also covered his face in bandages that his character wore on-screen for 5 weeks straight, off sets. This apparently resulted in a lot of people growing scared of him.
Jared Leto – Suicide Squad
The Clown Prince of Crime is not a role that can be taken lightly, and Leto may have taken his preparation for the part even further than Ledger did. The 43 year old’s decision to stay in character in between takes isn’t all that out of the ordinary, but his gift-giving habits certainly were. He sent his fellow cast members a series of bizarre presents, including a box of bullets for co-star Will Smith and a live rat for Margot Robbie. He even sent the entire cast a video of him in character alongside a dead pig (with one later slapped onto their lunch table filled to the brim with shell casings). Apparently ‘method gift-giving’ is a thing nowadays.
Kate Winslet – The Reader
One of the most extraordinary talents working today, Winslet holds the distinction as the youngest actor or actress in history to be nominated for six Academy Awards. Her first (and only) win came for her role as a former Nazi concentration camp guard in this 2008 drama, a performance that apparently took a significant toll on the actress. She’s said that it took months for her to fully break free of the part, equating leaving the character behind to escaping a serious car accident. Thankfully, Winslet has seemingly moved on in the years since, and she continues to be one of the top actresses in Hollywood.
Jamie Dornan – The Fall
Before Jamie made women across the globe go weak in the knees by playing the lead role in ‘The 50 Shades of Grey’, he played the character of the “Belfast strangler” in the BBC series of ‘The Fall’. To understand the mindset of a serial killer, Jamie confessed pushing a woman off the bus and pursuing her for several blocks after.
Johnny Depp — Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas
This one came to us as more of a surprise, because as brilliant as the actor is, he hasn’t been famously known for being a method actor. But when he hit the screens portraying himself as the crazy Hinter Thompson, it was perfection. Johnny Depp started to live in Thompson’s apartment where he smoked and slept next to barrels of gunpowder. Depp began recording all the conversations he had with Thompson and interrogated him about his life to get a clearer picture of the character he was to play. Depp even let Thompson shave his head, when he decided that the haircut given by the films hairstylist wasn’t good enough. Besides all this, Depp did a bunch of drugs while he played the character. Yet after all this insanity, Depp says that he was “very responsible” and did justice to the role. According to us, justice sure was served but responsible; now that’s questionable.
Joaquin Phoenix - I'm Still Here
Back in 2008, when this two-time Academy Award nominee announced that he was quitting acting to pursue a career as a hip-hop artist, most assumed it was a hoax. After roughly a year and a half of bizarre behavior and public appearances resulted in this 2010 mockumentary, which was later confirmed to be staged. After the film received a decidedly mixed critical reaction, Phoenix took a break from the acting game. He’s since returned from his self-imposed hiatus to earn a third Academy Award nomination for his phenomenal work in The Master, so it’s safe to say he’s now firmly back on track.
Adrian Broody – The Pianist
For Roman Polanski’s historical drama, Adrian Broody played the role of a Holocaust survivor. And to look as authentic as he could in the role, he decided to starve himself and slimmed his way down to 65 kgs. He believed that the genuine desperation that comes from starvation couldn’t be faked. He also broke up with this girlfriend and shut himself from any kind of contact with the outside world, to understand the mindset of a Jew who had lost everything at the hands of Nazi’s. So, you might watch sequences of him crying manically in the movie; well that’s as real as it gets. He has reportedly stated that for over a year, he lived in the fear of whether or not he’d be able to let go of the character.
Health Leader - The Dark Knight
Few actors have immersed themselves in a role quite like Ledger did when he was tapped to play Batman’s arch-nemesis, the Joker for Christoper Nolan’s The Dark Knight. The actor locked himself away in a London hotel room for a month, keeping a diary and experimenting with various voices and mannerisms until he’d come up with his ideal vision of the character. The result was one of the greatest villainous performances of all time – one that earned him a Best Supporting Actor Oscar in 2009.
Tragically, Ledger never got to see his work on the big screen, passing away as part of an accidental prescription drug overdose the year prior. The claims that the role actually drove Ledger to his end are almost completely unfounded, but his last completed film role will forever be tied to his passing.
Ed Harris — Pollock
