Actress Jennifer Lawrence said she feels strongly about other professionals who employ “method acting” to prepare for a role.
“I would be nervous to work with someone who’s method [acting],” the 32-year-old star said during an interview with “Hot Ones,” per The Hollywood Reporter. “Because I would have no idea how to talk to them, ’cause like, do I have to be in character? That would just make me nervous.”
The star of the new comedy “No Hard Feelings” described her personal approach to getting into character, which she says comes from another famous Hollywood star.
“I had always been very on/off, on/off until I did ‘American Hustle’ and worked with Christian Bale, who I noticed when the camera started rolling and the crew started preparing and it would be about 10 seconds to action, he [Bale] would start getting ready,” Lawrence said. “I saw that and was like, ‘That seems like a really good idea.’ So then I started to do that.”
Interestingly, Bale is well-known in Hollywood for being considered a method actor, despite denying that he is one. “You know, people call me that. And I don’t even really know what it is,” Bale told UNILAD. “I just kind of wing it.”
“Method actors study method acting. I’ve never studied any acting at all,” the “Dark Knight” star continued. “I just don’t want to offend true method actors. I just do whatever I do. I don’t know what it is.”
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Some examples of Bale’s commitment include gaining more than 40 pounds for his role in “American Hustle” and losing 63 pounds to play a chronic insomnia sufferer in the 2004 thriller “The Machinist.”
Method acting has been the subject of debate in the Hollywood community for a while. David Harbour of “Stranger Things” fame said he once contemplated killing a cat so he could know what murder felt like ahead of his role in a stage production of “Macbeth.” Marvel star Andrew Garfield said he starved himself of “sex and food” to prepare for the role of a 17th-century Jesuit priest in “Silence” in 2016.