by David Fairhurst
Before venturing any further, I need to point out that I am not a Method actor myself. No way. Not even close. And even if I were, I wouldn’t admit it, considering the poor reputation of Method actors these days. But I’m not one. Seriously. Okay, yes, I did study the Method for three years in grad school, and yes, I have adopted some of its techniques into my own process, but come on, that doesn’t make me a Method actor! What, are you kidding?! Please! All my training before then was Meisner-based, and I will go to my grave calling myself a Meisner actor. Okay? Are we clear on this? Not a Method actor. Not me.
Nonetheless, some people may be shocked to learn (and just in case anyone thinks the preceding paragraph was tongue-in-cheek, let me repeat, in all seriousness, I’m really not a Method actor) that I am, however—just like Al Pacino and Robert De Niro and other Method titans (and non-titans)—a bona fide lifetime member of the Actors Studio. That's where Lee Strasberg developed the Method some 60 years ago, where many of its most famous practitioners still occasionally drop by, and perhaps the last place in America where the Method light still shines.
Of course, any shock at my membership in the Actors Studio may have less to do with my non-Method ways than with my lack of demonstrable talent. After all, aren’t all Studio members famous (or at least working) actors and not disgruntled Back Stage copy editors? To which I reply: You know those stories you hear about how it took Jack Nicholson nine auditions or Harvey Keitel 13 auditions (or whatever it was) to get into the Studio? Well, the fact that I got in on my first try leads me to believe that either a) I am the greatest undiscovered actor in the world, or b) the Studio has really lowered its standards. (Hint: Pick b.)
I kid, of course. (See? A Studio member with a sense of humor—there’s one stereotype demolished already.) Truthfully, being a Method actor is not a requirement for joining the Actors Studio, and—my freak-accident membership notwithstanding—the Studio has not lowered its standards; from what I’ve seen, most of its members are very talented. Still, the Studio is certainly not what it used to be in the ’50s and ’60s, when the Method was the technique all “serious” actors were expected to employ and the Actors Studio was the place to master it. In fact, a few years ago a prominent Studio member confided to me that many members no longer list their Studio affiliation on their resumes, fearing their Method credentials will hurt their ability to get work.
So how did this happen? How did mastery of the Method go from being the pinnacle of acting achievement to a black mark on an actor’s reputation—and something some directors are so desperate to avoid that they’re willing to pay for an additional three words in a casting notice?
Answer: Bad actors. Lots of them.
Here’s the truth: There’s nothing inherently wrong with the Method as an acting technique. The problem is it’s difficult to learn, and most of those who try it are really, really bad at it. And bad Method acting has three hallmarks: It’s self-important, it’s self-indulgent, and it’s slow—the very things that all Method actors, good and bad, are accused of.
It’s slow because when Stanislavsky (upon whose work the Method is based) was developing his system in pre-revolutionary Russia, actors had months, even years to rehearse a play. Today you’ll get three weeks (and on a film three minutes—if you’re lucky). If you’re just learning how to do it, applying the Method to a role can be a time-consuming process of personal exploration. But as one of my former teachers used to say, if you want to have a career as a Method actor in today’s industry, you need to learn how to “work slow fast.” Bad Method actors haven’t figured that out yet.
And it’s self-indulgent because, frankly, they’re doing it wrong. If he weren’t already dead, Strasberg would have a stroke if he saw a Method actor, on stage in front of a paying audience, performing a heavy emotional scene while thinking back to when he was 4 years old and his dog died. Affective memory (of which this is an example) is one of the Method’s central exercises, but it’s just that: an exercise. You’re not supposed to do it in the middle of the show, you morons! But bad Method actors do exactly that; they “play their preparation,” as the saying goes, resulting in a performance that’s disconnected, rambling, and, yes, self-indulgent.
And then there’s the dreaded D word: Method actors—especially the bad ones—can be real divas. Part of it is the nature of the work itself, in which creating a character relies less on imagination (though bad Method actors fail to realize that even Strasberg saw the imagination as a powerful tool) and more on me, me, me—my feelings, my senses, my memories. And part of it is simple history: To study Method acting, you’re following in the footsteps of everyone from Brando and Dean and Hoffman and Newman to Christopher Walken, Ellen Burstyn, and Alec Baldwin. It has a certain mystique, and being in that company could give anyone—especially those accepted into the Actors Studio—a swelled head.
But there’s another thing bad Method actors don’t realize. As my first Method teacher told me in my very first class, the question you have to ask yourself is: Did all these famous actors get to where they are because of their Method training or despite it? In other words, the final arbiter of an actor’s worth is talent. Talent and the ability to achieve results. How they get to those results is irrelevant.
So, my advice to directors: If you plan on hiring bad actors, then yes, you should definitely stay away from Methodites. On the other hand, if you want to avoid problems entirely, just hire good actors.