Quotes & Sayings About Method Acting

In LA, too many people want to go the quickest route from A to B. Method acting offers them that. — Corin Nemec

There's a lot of romanticisation of the intuitive actor and method acting and all kinds of notions about getting inside a character and coming out from there. — Edward Norton

To be honest, there are so many things I learned in acting school beyond the method; it was a safe place to practice. So acting school was about exercising that acting muscle and doing it every single day - and having people tell you that you're bad every single day! Which pushes you to work even harder. — Jane Levy

My problem with the traditional acting method was that I never understood what you were supposed to be thinking about when you're onstage. — Tina Fey

I have my own method [of acting]. I come from, I've interrogated people; I come from an undercover background, so it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks. — Mekhi Phifer

Whether I build a character from the ground up or develop one, whether within my own copyright or in licensed work, I can step into that character's mind. It takes a kind of voluntary dissociation akin to method acting, military planning, marketing, or detective work: to think like the other guy and work out what he's going to do next. — Karen Traviss

A letter is a barrier, a reprieve, a charm against the world, an almost infallible method of acting at a distance. — Iris Murdoch

I don't know what that Method is. Acting is life, to me, and should be. — Vivien Leigh

I do the best I can - I know my way around [Russian method acting pioneer] Stanislavski, but I can't take myself seriously like that. I respect people who do it, of course. I just think I'm lucky to still be working at 73. You reach a point in life where you just think, "Show up, do your job, make sure the cheque's on the way," and that's it. I'm not hungry to do anything more, really. — Anthony Hopkins

I'm an entertainer, so in whatever form I entertain ... The thing about being a rapper is that you have more control over your form, whereas with acting you have to compromise a lot. — Method Man

I don't do method acting. If I play a farmer, I'm not gonna spend 3 weeks on a chicken farm. That's a bit too much for me. — Carice Van Houten

What method acting is for the stage, mezzofiction is for the page. — Fierce Dolan

I was trained by Method acting teachers and we were taught that aside from whatever gift you may or may not have or the level of that gift, that you were obliged to know how to build a table. It's a craft. It's like being a ballerina or a violinist. — Ellen Barkin

I hate the word "method acting." It's just so silly. You hear people going, "Yeah I'm a method actor." I'm like, "So what happens if you're playing a period film or something? You're in the Second World War. And what happens when your mom calls you on your phone? Do you go, 'Oh! What is this strange talking brick device?'" No. It's stupid. But you do everything you can to get in that mindset. — Jeremy Irvine

I do research. I do emotional sort of Method work. Somehow it's a huge mishmash of things that becomes my own acting process and my own way of navigating through something. But ultimately the desire is to be honest, and for that truth to bleed through into your work and onto the screen. — Nicole Kidman

Method acting? There are quite a few methods. Mine involves a lot of talent, a glass, and some cracked ice. — John Barrymore

As much as I know people love the method and what you can draw out of yourself, a lot of acting is very imaginative. — Patton Oswalt

I kinda lose my mind in 'Fringe,' or at least my character does. Whenever I'm acting, I tend to accidentally become unable to switch off the character. I'm a little bit of a method actor, but without really wanting to be. — Natassia Malthe

It's not a movie, no private screening This method acting, well, I call that living — Conor Oberst

Most American actors are taught the Stanislavsky method ... Method acting, but I really think that as an actor you have to develop what works for you. There is really not one way of doing anything. There are many ways of achieving the same goal. — Ving Rhames

I'm not really into method acting - the way I was taught was the good old-fashioned British way of just doing your research and getting on with it. — Laura Donnelly

Again, of two who act cautiously, you shall find that one attains his end, the other not, and that two of different temperament, the one cautious, the other impetuous, are equally successful. All which happens from no other cause than that the character of the times accords or does not accord with their methods of acting. And hence it comes, as I have already said, that two operating differently arrive at the same result, and two operating similarly, the one succeeds and the other not. On this likewise depend the vicissitudes of Fortune. For if to one who conducts himself with caution and patience, time and circumstances are propitious, so that his method of acting is good, he goes on prospering; but if these change he is ruined, because he does not change his method of acting. — Niccolo Machiavelli

Acting without design, occupying oneself without making a business of it, finding the great in what is small and the many in the few, repaying injury with kindness, effecting difficult things while they are easy, and managing great things in their beginnings; this is the method of Tao. — Laozi

Juilliard is wonderful in that they don't pick just one way of working. They give you a palette. There is method acting. There is a lot of attention to Shakespeare and verse. — Christian Camargo

I think a lot of that is what helped me develop my character. I wouldn't say it was Method, but it was definitely a little more in depth than I've done before in terms of acting. With the other kids, we all were such good friends by the time we started shooting. Because of that, it allowed us to trust each other more to push the dynamics of the relationship to places which you might not be able to had you not trusted that person. — Asa Butterfield

There's no such thing as The Method. The term 'method-acting' is so much nonsense. There are many methods, many techniques. — Susan Strasberg

According to Berkeley sociologist Arlie Hochschild, if you're feeling an intense emotion like anxiety or anger, there are two ways to manage it: surface acting or deep acting. Surface acting involves putting on a mask--modifying your speech, gestures, and expressions to present yourself as unfazed...In deep acting, known as method acting in the theater world, you actually become the character you wish to portray. Deep acting involves changing your inner feelings, not just your outer expressions of them...Deep acting turns out to be a more sustainable strategy for managing emotions than surface acting. Research shows that surface acting burns us out: Faking emotions that we don't really feel is both stressful and exhausting. If we want to express a set of emotions, we need to actually experience them. — Adam Grant

Nipple erection on command - now that's method acting. Oh, — Jim Butcher

I'm not a Method actor. I don't believe acting should be psychodrama. I look within myself and see what I can find to play the role with. If I'm playing a blind man, I don't go around blindfolded for days. A lot of good actors would, but I don't go in for that very much. I like to just make it up as I go along. — John Malkovich

There are these mythic unicorn-y tales of method acting, but Marlon [Brando] wanted to have a good time. — Johnny Depp

I've always done method acting. I'm a method actor, and I've done that for years. I never did acting and decided to take it seriously because all the parts people want me to do were playing the pretty role. If I want to play someone pretty, I'll play myself. — Jessica White

It kind of varies. I don't have a method yet. It depends on the script and the character I think I need. I've worked with acting coaches, researched roles, and channeled different parts of myself. It's on a case-by-case for me, right now. — Zoe Kravitz

'Whatever it takes' is my opinion of method acting and, indeed, any other kind of acting. Look at Brando and De Niro. But it's not my cup of tea. — Ian Holm

In Method acting, you can't have preconceived ideas. You have to live in the moment. You have to keep yourself open. — Dennis Hopper

Writing a story is pretty all-consuming for me - it feels a lot like method acting, and for the eight or twelve or fifteen months that I'm working on a story, I'm constantly thinking about how my narrator would react to whatever tangled situation I'm in. — Molly Antopol

I felt a gravitational pull to the material so that there's a certain element of acting that's not really necessary. I've really liked this in foreign movies before or I've observed others working with them and I've noticed that there's a method that goes on where the actors try and get the children, like the child actor, to interact with them in a real way. It seems like you're the adult trying to get the kid to fall in love with him. — Brendan Fraser

It will be thought that I am acting strangely in concerning myself at this day with what appears at first sight and simply a well-known method of fortune-telling. — A. E. Waite

Th e basic principle of Method acting is that you should draw on your own personal experience - "You know how you felt when you were seven, and your dog died? Well, think about that when you're playing Hamlet." It sounds simple enough, but it involves learning lots of techniques to heighten your capacity for emotional recall. Those techniques were westernized from the original Russian templates by people like Lee Strasberg, who taught James Dean and Al Pacino, and Stella Adler - another teacher in New York at the time - who taught Brando. — Anonymous

There's probably no one who understands Method acting better academically than I do, or actually uses it more in his work. But it's funny - nobody really sees that. It's perception versus reality, I suppose. — Jack Nicholson

Method acting is a label I don't really understand, because there's a method to everybody's acting. — Dougray Scott

You know, to an extent, Method acting feels occasionally lazy. — Richard C. Armitage

The best way of successfully acting a part is to be it. — Arthur Conan Doyle

Comedy's my first love. I love that so much. You play comedy in drama, too. The difference between genres doesn't really change the method of acting. — Emma Stone

Writing a novel is not method acting and I find it easy to step out of it at cocktail hour. — Bret Easton Ellis

I think there's a real connection between acting and writing novels because the way I write characters has a little bit to do with the method acting that I was taught in high school and college. — Jeffrey Eugenides

I'm not into that method acting thing. I just turn up, say my lines and go home. — Marc Warren

I think 'method acting' is a widely abused term. — Randeep Hooda

When I'm acting, it's like I am the character - no one can talk to me. But I'm not so method I'd sell my house and live on the street to play a tramp. — Tom Holland

I think people are always trying to demystify whatever acting is, so they want to know what your method is. — David Duchovny

I think with improv - and I say it all the time because it's become such a catch thing that you talk about improv - if the scene is well-written, you don't need to improv. But that being said, if something strikes you in the moment and, most importantly, you know where the scene is supposed to go, it's no different than method acting. — Vince Vaughn

It was like being threatened by wolves dressed as sheep, who had sunk so deep into their method acting that they were now unclear about the whole 'being dangerous' thing. — Jonathan L. Howard

I think in the past, around the time that method acting became so prevalent, it used to be that American actors were thought to be the kind that would work more from the inside out, and that the English actors worked more from the outside in. — Annette Bening

These kids only want to talk about acting method and motivation. in my day all we talked about was screwing and overtime. — Robert Mitchum

She marveled at the futility of his method: he was acting as if, by naming her opinion in advance, he would make her unable to alter it. — Ayn Rand

There were time when I was into method acting that I did have moments of residual character emotions, because the method bases your emotional responses as a character on emotional experiences from your real life. — Corin Nemec

I've dealt with a few method actors, and I don't know if should say this, but I think it's a bunch of nonsense. I think it's film acting and you just have to be on when the camera is rolling. — Natalie Portman

In the 'Life' of George Eliot, John Walter Cross gave an intriguing account of Eliot's creative method. "She told me that, in all her best writing, there was a 'not herself' which took possession of her, and that she felt her own personality to be merely the instrument through which this spirit, as it were, was acting," Cross wrote. — Rebecca Mead

All FILM directors are good actors, because you have to understand actors in order to program them. — Henry Johnson Jr

At first it was a bit strange and daunting to have to wear a mask, but afterwards I came to enjoy it. In warm conditions, though, it started to slip off my face. Other times they used this double-sided sticky tape, and I literally couldn't get it off my face. I would feel like I was ripping my face off and I had a lot of cuts and bruises because of it-huge red marks. People might think it was method acting. — Gerard Butler

I was raised in New York City and raised in the New York City theater world. My father was a theater director and an acting teacher, and it was not uncommon for me to have long discussions about the method and what the various different processes were to finding a character and exploring character and realizing that character. — Vin Diesel

No one is really a method actor, everyone has their way of going about it, preparing for it, but method is preparation, it's what you do to prepare. So my method is to read the script. Some actors' method is to read the script a hundred times and in the doing of it, to immerse themselves in as much of the reality as possible. Me, I believe strictly in acting. If I am out of breath, I'm out of breath. I ain't running nowhere. — Morgan Freeman

Method acting has had a major influence both in writing through the eyes of other people, and seeing through the eyes of other people, trying to address different ideas in a way that would go beyond preaching to the choir. — Jello Biafra