Kristen Stewart is weighing in on the Method acting debate.
“The Chronology of Water” director recently told the New York Times that acting is by nature “quite embarrassing and unmasculine,” and that going Method is a way for some male actors to temper the “inherently vulnerable” side of being a performer.
“Performance is inherently vulnerable and therefore quite embarrassing and unmasculine,” Stewart said. “There’s no bravado in suggesting that you’re a mouthpiece for someone else’s ideas. It’s inherently submissive. Have you ever heard of a female actor that was method?”
The comment was part of a larger conversation about Marlon Brando’s famous mispronunciation of “Krpton” in 1978’s “Superman.” The interviewer recalled Sean Penn, who knew Brando, saying it was his way of maintaining integrity while appearing in a “sellout movie.” Stewart said that men in Hollywood are often “aggrandized for retaining self” while women don’t get the same treatment.
“Brando sounds like a hero, doesn’t he? If a woman did that, it would be different,” she said. “If you have to do 50 push-ups before your close-up or refuse to say a word a certain way — I mean, Brando, [expletive], I’m not coming for him.”
She continued. “There’s a common act that happens before the acting happens on set: If they can protrude out of the vulnerability and feel like a gorilla pounding their chest before they cry on camera, it’s a little less embarrassing. It also makes it seem like a magic trick, like it is so impossible to do what you’re doing that nobody else could do it.”
Stewart then recalled a conversation that reaffirmed her belief that actresses aren’t given the same liberties when it comes to their craft.
She explained, “I asked a fellow actor: ‘Have you ever met a female actor that was method and needed to scream and do a whole thing?’ As soon as I said, ‘male actor, female actor,’ the reaction was like, ‘Do not mention the elephant in the room.’ And he goes, ‘Oh, actresses are crazy.’”
Read Stewart’s entire New York Times profile here.
