There are many ways that an actor can approach a role, but one of the most talked about is what’s called “method acting.” While what method acting really is is often confused, actors like Daniel Day-Lewis and Christian Bale have built their reputations around allegedly never breaking character during a production. However, Bradley Cooper, Bale's former co-star, reveals that’s not quite the way it works.
Many actors have talked about the experience of working alongside a method actor. We’ve heard bizarre stories from the set of Suicide Squad and the crazy things Jared Leto allegedly did when he played the Joker. Bradley Cooper recently appeared on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, where he said that until he met Christian Bale on the set of American Hustle, he really had no idea how the process worked. He explained…
I learned from Christian Bale on American Hustle. He just stayed in — because I didn’t understand this ‘stay in the character all the time’ [approach]. You know, you hear these stories, but you don’t know what the real is. Like, how does that work? You see a cellphone, do you lose your mind? How do you do it?
However, it turns out that at least for Christian Bale, he wasn’t fully immersing himself in his American Hustle character, but rather fully immersing himself in his accent. Bale kept his New York accent throughout American Hustle, but he had no problem talking to his co-workers simply as himself. Cooper continued…
I overthought it. Bale would just — he played this character that’s from New York in American Hustle. The first day I met him, he was [using] his accent, and the rest of the movie – even like on weekends – it was him, Christian. We would talk about stuff and his kid, but he would just speak in that voice. And I was like, ‘Oh, it’s that simple. It’s not some big thing.’... But I took it, and it’s wonderful. Because then you feel like you’re not acting.
Bradley Cooper says he borrowed the accent trick when he made American Sniper, and it helped him feel more comfortable when portraying his character. That's in spite of director Clint Eastwood apparently making fun of him on set for continuing to talk in his on-screen accent.
Considering that Bale was nominated for an Oscar for American Hustle and Cooper did the same in American Sniper, there's clearly something to be said for this process. To be fair, some directors hate method actors, and some actors who used to do it, like Meryl Streep, have stopped method acting.
While there may have been a particular form of “the method” decades ago, what’s clear now is that every actor simply does whatever they need to do to inhabit a character. Some may go to extremes of not breaking character, but some just hang on to the right accent.
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