Andrew Garfield has defended the exercise of method acting and revealed that he once starved himself of sex and food for his role in Silence.
Martin Scorsese directed Silence, the story of two Jesuit priests from Portugal who travel to Edo-era Japan to spread the ideal of Catholic Christianity, as well as locate a fellow priest who has gone missing.
It also starred Adam Driver, and he and Garfield both starved themselves ahead of their roles, as well as undergoing a 7-day silent Jesuit prayer.
In recent years, the process of method acting has come under more scrutiny, but Garfield believes it can be necessary.
“There have been a lot of misconceptions about what method acting is, I think," he told Variety.
"People are still acting in that way, and it’s not about being an a**hole to everyone on set, it’s actually just about living truthfully under imagined circumstances, being really nice to the crew simultaneously, being a normal human being, and being able to drop it when you need to and staying in it when you want to stay in it.”
Garfield's inspiration
Garfield says that he was inspired to give method acting a try after being involved in a casting session alongside Ryan Gosling.
The pair were together in a reading for The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, a movie based on the novel of the same name that ultimately went unproduced.
“He was alive, he didn’t care about doing it the same way over and over again. He was listening, he was very present, he was spontaneous, he was surprising, he wasn’t trying to be those things,” he said.
“There was a zen quality to it, but it was like being in a scene with a wild animal where you don’t know whether he was going to kiss you or kill you. And you hook into that, and you’re like ‘Oh, I want to follow whatever that is.’
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