15 Roles That Took Actors To New Extremes
According to a famous Hollywood legend, Dustin Hoffman stayed up for days and did strenuous exercise between shots in the 1976 thriller Marathon Man. When his co-star Laurence Olivier asked him what he was doing, Hoffman explained that he wanted to depict a man getting tortured.
“Why not try acting, dear boy?” Olivier responded.
Almost every actor knows the story of Olivier’s withering comment. Yet, many still insist upon doing method acting, blurring the line between reality and fiction. And in some extreme cases, the role gets too far.
1. Jared Leto (Suicide Squad, 2016)
Jared Leto had big clown shoes to fill when he followed Heath Ledger’s take on The Dark Knight to portray the Joker in Suicide Squad. One can understand the nervousness he felt trying to put his mark on the iconic character.
It’s a lot harder to forgive the things Leto did to embody the Joker. Leto would terrorize his cast mates, sending a live rat to Margot Robbie (who played his love interest Harley Quinn) and bullets to Will Smith. All that obnoxiousness resulted in a pretty forgettable performance, one ignored in the sequel The Suicide Squad.
2. Christian Bale (The Machinist, 2004)
The Welsh actor Christian Bale began acting in childhood, appearing in favorites such as Empire of the Sun and Henry V before turning eighteen. He knows a thing or two about creating a character, including changing his body to fit a role.
Bale has packed on muscle to play Batman and girth to play Vice President Cheney in Vice. Bale’s most extreme body change came with the movie The Machinist, dropping to a gaunt 121 pounds to capture his character’s disturbing state. Then he reached 190 pounds of muscle for his next role in Batman Begins.
3. Joaquin Phoenix (I’m Still Here, 2010)
After an excruciating 2010 interview in which actor Joaquin Phoenix seemed distracted and confused, David Letterman closed it up by quipping, “Sorry you couldn’t be here tonight.” Letterman thought that Phoenix had dropped by to promote his movie Two Lovers, but he in fact had come as part of his mockumentary, I’m Still Here.
In I’m Still Here, Phoenix plays an exaggerated version of himself, a self-absorbed celebrity with no awareness of others. He didn’t tell anyone else about the act, which confused everyone he met, including gap-toothed talk show hosts.
4. Choi Min-Sik (Oldboy, 2003)
The South Korean thriller Oldboy has tons of disturbing scenes, including a brutal hallway fight and a twist about the central relationship. The most upsetting moment might involve protagonist Dae-Su (Choi Min-Sik) eating dinner.
Part of his state of madness, Dae-Su eats a live octopus, for which director Park Chan-wook used a real animal instead of a prop. A vegetarian and a Buddhist, Choi prayed for forgiveness between each take but continued eating nonetheless, committed to the part.
5. Rooney Mara (A Ghost Story, 2017)
For various reasons, extreme method acting seems to appeal more to men, in particular those who have been acting since youth. Rooney Mara provided a rare exception in the drama A Ghost Story, written and directed by David Lowery.
Wracked with grief after her husband’s death, Mara’s character sits on her kitchen floor and devours an entire pie. As in most movies, Mara had to shoot the scene over and over again, eating a full pie each time. By the end of the day, Mara had to expel the pie right after Lowrey called cut, and has not eaten a single slice since.
6. Jamie Foxx (Ray, 2004)
As a charismatic performer and singer, Jamie Foxx had a lot going for him when he took on Ray Charles for the biopic Ray. But while Foxx could sing and play, he could not overcome one difference between Charles and himself: his eyesight.
To understand how the blind Charles got through his days, Foxx glued his eyelids shut while shooting Ray. According to accounts from the shooting, Foxx stumbled around a lot, tripping over objects and irritating castmates. However, Foxx did get a Best Actor Oscar out of the deal, which also distinguishes him from Charles, but in a good way.
7. Leonardo DiCaprio (The Revenant, 2015)
A former child actor with less-prestigious credits such as Critters 3 and Growing Pains, DiCaprio had hoped to win an Oscar for quite some time. When well-received turns in The Departed and Titanic couldn’t get the job done, DiCaprio pushed himself to the limit for the Western The Revenant.
DiCaprio put himself through the same punishment as his character, 19th-century fur trapper Hugh Glass. To understand Glass’s predicament, DiCaprio suffered through the snowy and rugged locations where director Alejandro Iñárritu shot. The ordeal resulted in DiCaprio securing his long-awaited Academy Award.
8. Austin Butler (Elvis, 2022)
Austin Butler didn’t have to wait quite as long as DiCaprio to get Oscar attention, scoring a nomination for his first lead role. As the eponymous King of Rock & Roll in the Baz Luhrmann-directed biopic.
Butler garnered a Best Actor nom thanks to his ability to replicate the King’s drawl and his moves, shaking his hips like the original. However, Butler has since claimed that he can’t stop talking like Elvis, even when just hanging out. It’s not quite as destructive as other examples on this list, but it must have gotten old right away for Butler’s friends and family.
9. Robert De Niro (Raging Bull, 1980)
A lot of the younger actors mentioned here learned about method acting via their hero, Robert De Niro. De Niro studied under coach Lee Strasberg, the man credited with inventing method acting, and turned in committed performances for many New Hollywood directors.
The most infamous example of De Niro’s approach came when he played boxer Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull, directed by Martin Scorsese. De Niro trained with LaMotta to get into fighting shape, even breaking the fighter’s teeth during a sparring session. Then, De Niro spent months gaining weight and eating junk for the older and out-of-shape LaMotta. Those extremes continue to inspire actors today, for better or for worse.
10. Heath Ledger (The Dark Knight, 2008)
It’s a bit too simplistic to blame Heath Ledger’s tragic and untimely death on his playing the Joker in The Dark Knight. However, the lengths to which the troubled actor went to realize the Clown Prince of Crime wasn’t the healthiest.
Ledger locked himself in a hotel room for weeks, where he filled a diary with disturbing thoughts and images of people who inspired the character’s mental state. The upsetting material helped Ledger turn in a magnetic turn for The Dark Knight, but it took him some time to shake off the weight of the experience.
11. Jim Carrey (Man on the Moon, 1999)
Comedian Andy Kaufman would get laughs with his absurd bits, which sometimes involved him taking on odd-ball characters and confounding viewers. So it makes sense that Jim Carrey would also confound people while portraying Kaufman in the biopic Man on the Moon, directed by Miloš Forman.
The documentary Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond shows Carrey’s immersion into the character. He forced people to call him “Andy” instead of “Jim,” and even went to clubs to do stand-up as Andy’s alter-ego Tony Clifton. As good as Man on the Moon is, many still criticize Carrey’s extremes.
12. Dustin Hoffman (Kramer vs. Kramer, 1979)
Dustin Hoffman proved himself one of the most important actors of the New Hollywood era and beyond. However, a variety of credible allegations have marred his reputation, which makes his behavior during Kramer vs. Kramer that much more upsetting.
In Kramer vs. Kramer, Hoffman and Meryl Streep play Ted and Joanna Kramer, a couple going through a bitter divorce. In one scene, Ted slaps Joanna in a fit of anger. While that action might make sense for the character, Hoffman never consulted Streep about his decision, which made it a real act of violence for an imaginary effect.
13. Johnny Depp (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, 1998)
Based on the memoir by gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson and directed by former Monty Python member Terry Gilliam, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas has a ton of big personalities. Star Johnny Depp took things even further by dedicating himself to studying Thompson in preparation.
In addition to reading all of Thompson’s writings that he could find, including his journals, Depp hung out with the author. Depp slept in Thompson’s basement, sold his car to get the same vehicle as Thompson, and even shaved his head to match the man’s hairline. Given everyone involved, it could have been so much worse, but that’s more than most would do.
14. Robert Pattinson (Good Time, 2017)
Like Depp before him, Robert Pattinson wanted to get out of his comfort zone to understand someone on the edge of society. That character is Connie Nikas in Good Time, the selfish bank robber who goes on a destructive run after a heist with brother Nick (played by Benny Safdie, who directed the film with his brother Josh Safdie).
Connie goes to a lot of dark places in Good Time. To get ready, Pattinson got a trashy apartment where he lived for a few months and even took a job at a car wash. Thanks to the Twilight movies, Pattinson has a very recognizable face, but these new surroundings allowed him to work on becoming Connie without interruption.
15. Lee Pace (The Fall, 2006)
In many cases, method acting results in obnoxious and even dangerous behavior. But it’s not always a bad thing, as demonstrated by Lee Pace’s approach to making The Fall, directed by Tarsem. Pace plays an opium-addicted stuntman who meets a little girl (Catinca Untaru) while trapped in the hospital. To convince the girl to steal more of the medicine for him, the stuntman tells her a fantastic story.
Untaru is remarkable in The Fall, completely convincing as a kid listening to a story — because that’s what she is. Pace pretended to be an actual patient who wanted to tell fairy tales to Untaru, who responded to him without any knowledge of the movie they made together.
