When the madness in the method acts against actors
The problems arise when they make a cottage industry out of behind-the-scenes revelations
Ahead of the premiere this week of the fourth and final season of Succession, the debate about the extreme method acting madness of star Jeremy Strong has once again brought the drastic measures taken by disciples of the acting school under the microscope.
Revelations made in a 2021 New Yorker profile of the actor in which his dedication to the acting style — pioneered in the late 1950s by stars such as Marlon Brando, James Dean and Montgomery Clift, and elevated to god-like status by the American New Wave generation of the 1970s in the performances of Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Dustin Hoffman — have made many people choke in disbelief and mock him for an over-the-top attitude to his fellow cast and crew that seemed cruel, unusual and unnecessary. Strong reportedly took his full immersion approach to playing black sheep Kendall Roy to the limit: insisting that he be isolated from the rest of the cast for the duration of the shoot to help create the sense of isolation the c...
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