Early kings of method acting

Second Take

The Oscars for acting these days seems to include more and more British actors — something you didn’t see before. One or two Brits would get acting Oscars, and the rest would all be American. Now, even a British actor playing an American character is awarded an Oscar.

I hope this continues. Because it’s a pleasure to watch British actors do their cool thing, while Americans go to great lengths and loads of trouble to achieve the same effect. You’ll probably know that notorious anecdote screenwriter William Goldman recounted about Dustin Hoffman and Lawrence Olivier on the sets of Marathon Man. It has to do with how Olivier reacted to Hoffman’s method acting preparations.

Olivier noticed Hoffman on the sets was beginning to look haggard and weak. Worried, he turned to director Schlesinger and asked what had happened. And the director replied that there was nothing wrong, Hoffman had deliberately not slept for a couple of days and not eaten because it was Hoffman’s way to prepare for a scene that called for him to look that way. Amused and astonished, Olivier snapped back: “Hasn’t the dear boy heard of acting?” Or something like that — I forget exactly how it goes. 

But in other words, Olivier was asking why Hoffman wasn’t creating an illusion of a beaten, haggard character, rather than trying to physically look like one. British acting turns on verbal skills — strong voice, superb diction — impersonation and make up to create the illusion of a character. British theatre acting is emphatically physical, not psychological. Olivier often used body posture, voice and make up to figure out how a character should be played. (All those accents he put on to play Nazis and Jewish Nazi hunters!)

Anthony Hopkins has confessed that playing Hannibal Lecter was easy once he had found the right voice and look for the part. The criticism method had levelled at old Hollywood was that its stars did not play a character — they played themselves. What these stars brought to the screen was a tinsel personality, not a character who was a recognisable, breathing, living entity.

The method actors, on the other hand, had revolutionised acting by eschewing their own personality and becoming the character they were playing. But what should be evident to anyone following American movies today is that all of the method actors — Al Pacino, Robert De Niro — have their own distinctive style that you can spot at once. So, what personality had they left behind really?

It’s not just American actors who take their roles so seriously, but even their teachers. It’s the acting teachers who bring this gravitas to American acting. For instance, playwright and director David Mamet feels — “Acting is not a genteel profession. In ancient times, actors used to be buried at a crossroads with a stake through the heart. Those people’s performances so troubled the onlookers that they feared their ghosts. An awesome compliment. Those players moved the audience such that the audience feared for their soul.”

Somehow British actors manage these awesome performances without showing their training or technique. Today, on the other hand, the very school that should have kept technique and training hidden looks and feels showy: method actors now come across as over the top and strained.

The early performances of method actors, when they immersed themselves in a role, internalising a character till they became that person, had an authenticity to it: Pacino in Serpico and Godfather-II and De Niro in Mean Streets and Taxi Driver. They knew how to play small, wounded, low-life characters, but seem to be at a loss to play the larger than life roles demanded of them now.

De Niro’s recent performances for instance, with that smirk permanently in place, is too jarring. With Hoffman you never forget he is acting. Nicholson hams away gloriously. Robert Duvall alternates between being ruthlessly restrained and going over the top. Gene Hackman is still a powerful actor, but every new performance of his seems to mimic his earlier one.

Marlon Brando, having become quickly bored with his gifts, performed lazily. Nicolas Cage is passionate but affected. Ditto for Meryl Streep, Johnny Depp,and Kevin Kline. And alas, Morgan Freeman too has been so overexposed and has been playing the same character over and over again that his (what we in India call) underacting is beginning to look like overacting!