Thousands of film actors have gone so profoundly into the role that they've hurt themselves or given co-stars a surprise or even a scare during filming. This extreme way of acting is called method acting, and it is a type of acting technique where it becomes completely impossible to discern when the actor is in character versus their real life.
Daniel Day-Lewis is perhaps the most celebrated exponent of method acting, but he's not in a league of one. Here are some of the others. Undoubtedly, many have received rich awards for their efforts in dramatic change and superfluous praise. While some were subjected to stiff criticism, others were stretched to the limits or sometimes even benched after too much was given. Here is a list of 20 such exceptional actors who have profoundly nailed method acting and made the character their own.
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20. Nicolas Cage - Birdy
One of the greatest method performances by Nicolas Cage is in the early career war drama Birdy, from 1984. In this film, Cage plays a Vietnam veteran who has been severely disfigured and comes to visit his friend, played by Matthew Modine, in a psychiatric hospital. To prepare for his role, 19-year-old Cage went to the extreme. He had all of his wisdom teeth extracted without anesthesia so he would understand the physical pain that his character endures and then spent weeks with bandages wrapped around his face to replicate that pain and isolation.
19. Antonia Campbell-Hughes - 3096 Tage
For her role in the German drama 3096 Tage, Antonia Campbell-Hughes took "suffering for art" to a whole new level. The film recounts the true and traumatic story of Natascha Kampusch, an Austrian girl kidnapped at age 10 and held captive for over eight years—3,096 days, to be precise. Like Kampusch, Campbell-Hughes also shaved off her head and followed the same dieting regime as Kampusch to weigh less than 100 pounds at the time of her escape. The dungeon was about less than 54 square feet, where Kampusch was held captive.
18. Martin Sheen - Apocalypse Now
Today, "method acting" conjures images of dramatic physical transformations or intense experiences to connect with a character. Martin Sheen's approach is much more in line with Lee Strasberg's method of using the actor's life experiences to enhance the role. Sheen brought his own personal battles to the set, particularly his alcoholism, which deeply influenced the film's iconic opening scene. On that day, Sheen was sobering up, and the director Francis Ford Coppola captured moments of him smashing a mirror, weeping, and smearing blood—moments that became one of the film's most remembered scenes.
17. Val Kilmer - The Doors
In the 1980s, Val Kilmer was the man in Top Gun and Willow, but he hadn't yet shown off his Juilliard training. All that changed when he landed the role of Jim Morrison in The Doors (1991). So eager to please director Oliver Stone, Kilmer even spent thousands making a music video as Morrison. Once cast, he went the whole hog—reading Morrison's work, interviewing the Doors' producer Paul Rothchild, and frequenting Morrison's old haunts. Kilmer's dedication was so intense that even the band struggled to distinguish his voice from Morrison's in recordings.
16. Matt Damon - Courage Under Fire
Before his fame from the Good Will Hunting and Jason Bourne film series, Matt Damon was an up-and-coming actor in the early 1990s. He got his breakthrough in the 1996 war drama Courage Under Fire, where he played the role of Specialist Andrew Ilario, a former medic who copes with the traumas of war through heroin addiction. Damon lost so much weight to play the role that he weighed just 139 pounds. His regimen was brutal: he ran 13 miles daily and mostly ate chicken breast.
15. Daniel Day-Lewis - The Crucible
Daniel Day-Lewis is a three-time Oscar winner committed to method acting that's extreme in commitment and always renowned for an intense transformation during rehearsals. He contracted pneumonia after refusing the film crew's offer to provide a warm coat on a frigid day while shooting Gangs of New York, and he signed texts, such as that for Lincoln, "Abe." Day-Lewis continued to take authenticity to new heights with his role as John Proctor in The Crucible (1996). He lived for months in a recreated 17th-century village without electricity or running water, built his character's home using period tools, and traded his motorcycle for a horse.
14. Ashton Kutcher - Jobs
Movies about the icon of technology started to develop just a few days after he died in 2011. Hollywood saw Ashton Kutcher play this complex inventor in the 2013 film. He was prepared for three months because he studied hours of archive footage to learn Jobs' voice, posture, facial expressions, and mannerisms. Even more extreme was when Kutcher tried a fruit-only diet, replicating Jobs' real diet, one of the many vain alternative treatments he tried for his cancer.
13. Jared Leto - Suicide Squad
Jared Leto's notoriously outrageous behavior on Suicide Squad has reached the stuff of fan lore, but not everything in this case proved to be true. Embracing the role as the Joker did not include sending used condoms to his co-stars. Despite much attention on his part, it was only about 10 minutes of the Joker in this movie, and most of his footage ended up on the cutting room floor. Fans are still ready to watch more versions of his Joker in future films.
12. Jamie Foxx - Ray
Before Ray, the best-known work of Jamie Foxx was his television smash The Jamie Foxx Show and films as small as Booty Call, but in Ray, he proves to be a huge talent. To prepare himself for the part of Ray Charles, Foxx dieted down to a skinny 160 pounds and pasted his eyes closed. He also had a dental prosthetic chipped the front teeth for real-ness. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor this time and earned a nomination for Best Supporting Actor in Collateral, where he played some offbeat cab driver the same year but took much less time to rehearse.
11. Marlon Brando -The Men
Set in a military hospital, The Men tells the story of a paraplegic ex-soldier who struggles with his new reality. Best known for his groundbreaking method acting, which he showcased for the first time in A Streetcar Named Desire, Brando brought an air of naturalism into the movie that contrasted with his co-star, Vivien Leigh. To prepare for The Men, Brando was in character long before filming began. For one month, he was positioned in a bed at Birmingham Army Hospital and was viewing patients and working to adapt to upper body dependency.
10. Johnny Depp - Richard Says Goodbye
In 2018, two images of Johnny Depp were widely circulating online. An actor in hugely successful movies like Pirates of the Caribbean and flops like Mortdecai, why was the internet so suddenly interested in him? In both pictures, it seemed he was visibly ill. A photo posted by "johnny_the_depp," an Instagram fan page, showed a picture of him with a fan in Russia - Depp appeared pallid and frighteningly thin. Another photo, in which Depp was displayed in loose-fitting jeans and hat-wearing shades to cover his face, posted by violet_loveit on Instagram, raised followers' concern.
9. Hilary Swank - Boys Don't Cry
In this movie, Hilary Swank plays the role of Brandon Teena, a trans man whose life ended tragically in a hate crime. Swank had only done a few TV and film roles at the time. For Boys Don't Cry, Swank fully committed herself to the role, taking on the role of being a man for a month before filming. She bound her chest, lost weight, and adopted masculine characteristics, immersing herself in Teena's life to bring authenticity to the role.
8. Jim Carrey - Man on the Moon
It was only his second dramatic film after nearly two decades as a comedian: Man on the Moon - Jim Carrey played the quirky performer Andy Kaufman. Known for only comedies, Carrey was ready to go big time capturing Kaufman for this biopic. Interestingly, off-camera, Jim Carrey stayed in character to get everything Andy Kaufman did. When the famous wrestler Jerry Lawler, with whom Kaufman had been involved in a widely publicized feud, showed up on the set, Carrey insisted that he reenacted the infamous wrestling move, which Lawler refused to do for safety reasons.
7. Aaron Eckhart - Rabbit Hole
Drawing on personal grief for a role is common for many actors, but pretending to feel grief is another matter entirely. In an interview on The Howard Stern Show, Aaron Eckhart revealed that he joined a grief support group to prepare for his role in Rabbit Hole. Aware that he wasn’t a parent and hadn’t experienced such a loss, Eckhart admitted it was insensitive to attend. He even fabricated a story about losing a child while surrounded by couples who had genuinely endured that tragedy.
6. Jamie Dornan - The Fall
Jamie Dornan learned nothing about playing a serial killer from his role as Sheriff Graham Humbert on Once Upon a Time, but it is fitting that he followed it up with a role as prime suspect Paul Spector on BBC Two's thriller The Fall. Dornan admitted that he once stalked a stranger to get into character, although he wasn't proud of it. The experience was handy in portraying such an intense and obsessed person like Christian Grey, the lead character of Fifty Shades of Grey. For just one of the roles, however, he received a nomination through the BAFTA; unfortunately, that was not for his famous role in The Red Room of Pain.
5. Shia LaBeouf - Fury
Who would have thought that Shia LaBeouf- the former shaggy-haired child star of Holes and Even Stevens- would grow up to be one of his generation's most daring actors? Known for grappling with fame's impact (he once watched every one of his films in a public marathon and walked the red carpet with a paper bag over his head reading "I am not famous"), LaBeouf is intensely committed to his craft. He fully dived head-first, body and soul—mind into it—playing the profoundly religious tank gunner Boyd "Bible" Swan in David Ayer's WWII film Fury.
4. Tom Hanks - Cast Away
For movies, Tom Hanks transformed his body dramatically for any film role. In the film A League of Their Own, he reportedly gained 30 pounds, transforming into baseball coach Jimmy Dugan. He lost weight to portray an HIV-positive lawyer in Philadelphia named Andrew Beckett. For a role in Cast Away, wherein he was a FedEx worker lost on an island named Chuck Noland, Hanks shed over 50 pounds. His weight-loss routine determined the production schedule for this movie.
3. Matthew McConaughey - Dallas Buyers Club
Matthew McConaughey prepared for his role as rodeo cowboy Ron Woodruff in Dallas Buyers Club by consulting Tom Hanks, who had lost a lot of weight for Philadelphia and Cast Away. He consulted a nutritionist and lost 50 pounds from 185 pounds, which exceeded his target of 145 to reach 135. He even suffered from vision problems due to this extreme weight loss. McConaughey also stayed isolated, avoiding sunlight for six months to achieve the pale look of Woodruff for living the full life of his character.
2. Adrien Brody - The Pianist
All the key qualification criteria that must be met for an Oscar nomination while playing Wladyslaw Szpilman were met in The Pianist when Adrien Brody lost 30 pounds from his 6-foot-1 frame to spend his days hiding from the Nazis. He also took piano lessons to represent the skills of the Polish radio pianist precisely. At 29, Brody became the youngest Best Actor Oscar winner in a film he devoted himself to wholeheartedly.
1. Christian Bale - The Machinist
One of the most extreme transformations was Christian Bale's weight loss for The Machinist. The character Trevor was written for a short man, and the aim would have been to get him down to just 120 pounds to avoid looking too extreme. But this was a challenge that Bale, ever the physical chameleon, insisted on undertaking himself. In fact, his co-star Michael Ironside remembered Bale insisting, "No, don't change the weights. I want to see if I can make them." Bale again lost weight after bulking up for Batman Begins for his role in The Fighter.
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