Now, method acting is traditionally about using your own lived experiences to inform how you portray a character’s emotions. However, it’s become popularly known as when an actor takes on the persona of their character for the duration of the project. See: Adrien Brody, Jared Leto, Daniel Day-Lewis, and so on.
In a conversation with the New York Times, Kristen was asked whether she related to Marlon Brando’s approach to method acting, specifically when he pronounced “Krypton” as “Kryp-tin” in a Superman movie to retain “artistic independence” while doing a “sellout” movie. “Poor male actors. It must be so painful,” Kristen remarked.
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“That kick-started so many things! Performance is inherently vulnerable and therefore quite embarrassing and unmasculine. There’s no bravado in suggesting that you’re a mouthpiece for someone else’s ideas,” she continued. “It’s inherently submissive. Have you ever heard of a female actor that was method?”
Kristen continued, “Men are aggrandized for retaining self. Brando sounds like a hero, doesn’t he? If a woman did that, it would be different. If you have to do 50 push-ups before your close-up or refuse to say a word a certain way.”
“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,” she added.
Calling the “Krypton” moment “defensive,” she continued, “I had a recent conversation that will speak to this. 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.'”
Her words quickly made the rounds:
You can read the full interview here.