Actor Martin Freeman, who played the beloved Bilbo Baggins in “The Hobbit” series, excoriated comedic actor Jim Carrey for his behavior on set while filming the acclaimed 1999 movie “Man on the Moon,” in which Carrey played Andy Kauffman.
During an interview on the “Off Menu” podcast, Freeman reacted to the documentary “Jim and Andy,” which profiled the extreme lengths that Jim Carrey went to while filming the movie, severely alienating director Milos Foreman and other members of the cast and crew. For instance, Carrey would refuse to be called by his real name. According to Martin Freeman, this form of “method acting” is “a highly impractical way of working, which is why I think it belongs more to the student and academic side than the practical ability side.”
“To be honest, it’s quite a pain when someone ‘loses themselves,’” Freeman said. “It is a massive pain because it’s no longer a craft and a job.”
Though Freeman did not personally attack Carrey, who he referred to as a “lovely and smart person,” he felt the extreme measures employed amounted to “self-aggrandizing, selfish, narcissistic f***ing bollocks.”
“For me, and I’m genuinely sure Jim Carrey is a lovely and smart person, but it was the most self-aggrandizing, selfish, narcissistic f***ing bollocks I have ever seen,” Freeman said, as reported by Indiewire. “The idea that anything in our culture would celebrate or support it is deranged, literally deranged.”
“You need to keep grounded in reality, and that’s not to say you don’t lose yourself in the time between ‘action’ and ‘cut’, but I think the rest of it is absolute pretentious nonsense and highly amateurish. It is not professional. Get the job done, do your work,” he added.
Freeman noted that an actor has to draw the line between the part they play and the reality they inhabit and argued that it’s irresponsible to keep it up method acting once the cameras stop rolling.
“I am a very lapsed catholic but if you believe in transubstantiation, then you’re going somewhere along the line of ‘I became the character,’ No, you didn’t, you’re not supposed to become the f***ing character because you’re supposed to be open to stuff that happens in real life because someone at some stage is going to say ‘Cut’ and there’s no point going, ‘What does ‘cut’ mean because I’m Napoleon?’ Shut up,” he said.
The debate over how far an actor can and should go to get a performance has been an age-old debate in the entertainment industry, most famously illustrated when Sir Laurence Olivier chastised Dustin Hoffman while filming “Marathon Man.”
“Dustin Hoffman has long been known as one of method acting’s most earnest exponents. A showbiz story involves his collaboration with Laurence Olivier on the 1976 film Marathon Man,” reported The Guardian. “Upon being asked by his co-star how a previous scene had gone, one in which Hoffmann’s character had supposedly stayed up for three days, Hoffmann admitted that he too had not slept for 72 hours to achieve emotional verisimilitude. ‘My dear boy,’ replied Olivier smoothly, ‘why don’t you just try acting?’ (Hoffman subsequently attributed his insomnia to excessive partying rather than artistry).”