On the surface level, method acting seems pretty cool — an actor being so committed to their craft that they stay in character even when the cameras stop rolling. However, in practice, method acting comes at a cost — which is often paid by the actor’s costars.
Here are 11 times actors called out the worst method actors they’ve worked with:
1.
In 2023, Brian Cox told Town & Country that his Succession costar Jeremy Strong is “a very good actor,” but being around someone who’s always in character is “fucking annoying.”
2.
In 2022, Vicky Krieps told the Telegraph that she went into Phantom Thread without knowing anything about Daniel Day-Lewis’s Method acting, but she tried to keep an open mind. She said, “But after half the movie, I was just really tired of it. Like: ‘OK, I get it. It’s a game. I’ve played it. But can we just talk normally now, please?'”
3.
In 2007, Tyrese Gibson told Elle, “[My Annapolis costar] James Franco is a Method actor. I respect Method actors, but he never snapped out of character. Whenever we’d have to get in the ring for boxing scenes, and even during practice, the dude was full-on hitting me.”
4.
In 2013, Paul Giamatti told BuzzFeed that filming Man on the Moon with Jim Carrey method acting was “a very strange experience.” He said, “It was one of the weirdest experiences I’ve had making a movie, to be honest with you. It was just wacky. Jim was wacky during it. He did this whole thing where he was Andy Kaufman all the time when he was on set and when he was in the costume, and was Tony Clifton all the time when he was Tony Clifton.”
5.
In 2022, Jesse Plemons told Variety that a comment his The Power of the Dog costar Benedict Cumberbatch made in character “pissed [him] off.” He said, “There was one time he got under my skin. He was like, ‘Hey, big boy.’ It wasn’t ‘fatso.’ I feel like a few people in life have been like, ‘Hey, big boy,’ and I was like, ‘Goddamn it. What the fuck.'”
6.
In 2009, Bronson Pinchot told the AV Club that he thought his Risky Business costar Tom Cruise was “the biggest bore on the face of the Earth.” He said, “He had spent some formative time with Sean Penn—we were all very young at the time, Tom was 20, I was 23. Tom had picked up this knack of calling everyone by their character names, because that would probably make your performance better, and I don’t agree with that. I think that acting is acting, and the rest of the time, you should be you, but he called us all by our character names.”
7.
After filming the Marathon Man scene where Dustin Hoffman’s character had stayed awake for three days, his costar Laurence Olivier asked how it went. Dustin reportedly said he also hadn’t slept for three days, to which Laurence famously replied, “My dear boy, why don’t you just try acting?”
8.
Speaking of Dustin Hoffman, in 2018, Meryl Streep told the New York Times that her Kramer vs. Kramer costar slapped her off-script without consent. She said, “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.”
9.
In 2016, Viola Davis told E! News that her Suicide Squad character Jared Leto sent her a box of bullets. She said, “It was a little worrisome. It made you a little bit nervous, and I’m pretty tough. You know, I got into a few fights when I was growing up…but it scared me a little bit.”
10.
Similarly, in 2016, Suicide Squad costar Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje told E! News that Jared Leto sent him “sticky Playboy magazines.”
11.
And finally, in 2015, Will Smith told the Beats 1 Radio Show that he “never actually met Jared Leto.” He said, “We worked together for six months and we’ve never exchanged a word outside of ‘action!’ and ‘cut!’ We’ve never said ‘hello,’ we’ve never said ‘good day.’ I’ve only ever spoken to him as Deadshot and him as the Joker.”
