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Natalie Portman has been acting since she was 12 years old. She has played a variety of characters ranging from her Oscar-winning role as a ballerina in 2010's Black Swan to eventually Mark Hamill's mother in Star Wars as well as a couple of Marvel blockbusters.
But the one acting technique she's never employed is Method. When she spoke to The Wall Street Journal, the actress said she's never tried it and that the technique is a luxury that women can't afford.
Natalie Portman says no Method acting
“I don't think that children or partners would be very understanding of, you know, me making everyone call me ‘Jackie Kennedy' all the time,” she explained.
Method acting and motherhood just don't mix, Portman said. However, it doesn't mean she doesn't prepare. For Black Swan, she trained for months as a ballet dancer and even restructured her diet to only include almonds and carrots. But the actress said she can still separate herself from the role when she's filming a movie.
She spoke about Method acting after Carey Mulligan stated that she never tried it until she played opposite Bradley Cooper in Maestro.
In an interview with Variety, Mulligan said, “There was a part of me as an actor that always felt like, ‘Well, I'm never going to be one of those actors that keeps their dialects in between takes.”
“There was a part of me that slightly held back, or maybe nervous of completely committing to something. But that was what Bradley asked, basically, at the beginning of the process,” she continued.
“He was like, ‘If you're going to do this, you just have to fully, fully do it.' When he said that, I was like, ‘Okay, I'm going to absolutely do it all.' I'm going to do all the research. I'm going to do all the dialect stuff. I'm going to do everything, so that when I get on set, I am 100% able to just feel like I'm onstage and have that sense of ‘I don’t remember what happened,'” Mulligan added.
How Method do you want to go?
Cooper is known to be one of several Hollywood actors who use Method acting techniques. Daniel Day-Lewis, Jared Leto and Jeremy Strong are also Method actors.
Leto has cultivated that reputation that he even referenced it when he presented at the recently concluded Golden Globes.
“I have been in presenter mode for weeks now,” he told the audience.
“I've been doing research developing my character, incessantly reminding everyone around me to please call me by my character name, dammit… I've also learned the art of holding an envelope. It's about the angle, the grip. It's about the subtlety, the meaningful connection between presenter partner and paper. It is a deeply emotional journey,” Leto said in what might have been a jesting tone.
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However, his penchant for getting lost in roles had him sending his Suicide Squad co-stars disgusting gifts. I imagine this did not endear his Joker to them.
Leto spoke to Variety in 2020 about being called a Method actor, saying, “I appreciate the term, but I think it's a little cloudy, the definition.”
He admitted that being called one can be pretentious. He noted that while he has a tendency to be over-prepared, he also wanted to deliver. But most of all, he wanted to be known as someone who is “a pleasure to work with. And to be collaborative, and to have a good experience on set.”
Not everyone is on board with Method acting, though. Mads Mikkelsen said that the technique is pretentious and also, “It's bullshit. Preparation, you can take into insanity.”
He made the case that if the film is awful, what has been achieved? Is it something that's supposed to be impressive?
In defense of Method acting
Andrew Garfield, on the other hand, defended the technique. He deprived himself of food and sex when he had to play a Jesuit priest for Martin Scorsese's 2016 film Silence.
“There been a lot of misconceptions about what method acting is, I think,” he said.
“People are still acting in that way, and it’s not about being an asshole to everyone on set. It’s actually just about living truthfully under imagined circumstances, and being really nice to the crew simultaneously, and being a normal human being, and being able to drop it when you need to and staying in it when you want to stay in it,” Garfield continued.
Even though her character in May December went to absurd lengths to play a role, Portman doesn't subscribe to the Method technique. She's fine doing her own thing and she has the Oscar to be prove it.
