Ben Kingsley, who said he was “frightened but determined to get the role,” also said he had little time to prepare for it. “I was offered the role in September, left for India in October and started shooting in November,” Kingsley recalls. Once he arrived at the land of the Mahatma, he completely immersed himself. “I practiced yoga in the morning…In the evenings I did my shoots and, in the night, I took spinning classes,” Kingsley explained.
Learning to spin thread with an authentic wooden spinning machine, Kingsley thought, would be better than trying to fake it on automated spinning machines. Beyond those efforts, Kingsley shaved his head and lost 20 pounds, authentically, by abiding by Gandhi’s vegetarian diet.
The Danish Girl (2015)
It’s no surprise that Redmayne is on this list — he’s become rather well-known for his foray into method acting. One of his films, “The Danish Girl,” where he plays transgender artist Lili Elbe, meant he was researching the role for two years before he even knew it was officially his to play!
He also interviewed many trans women, absorbing their stories, as well as an ex-colleague of his, Lana Wachowski (director of “The Matrix”), and gaining insights. He said it was a learning curve because he had always traditionally associated gender with sexuality. The end result was a performance that critics and audiences alike adored.
House of Gucci (2021)
Lady Gaga is an incredibly talented singer-songwriter who has taken on the challenging role of Patrizia Reggiani in Ridley Scott's "House of Gucci." The character is notorious for plotting the murder of her husband, Maurizio Gucci, and Gaga's performance promises to be a tour de force.
In preparation for the role, the singer revealed to British Vogue that she spent over a year living as her character both on and off the set. This level of immersion is not uncommon in the world of method acting, but it did cause some concern for Gaga's friends and family, who noticed that she became somewhat disconnected from reality.
The Revenant (2015)
Leonardo DiCaprio is known for being a method actor, completely committing to his roles in every film he's been a part of, and 2015's "The Revenant" was no exception. DiCaprio played Hugh Glass, a tough frontiersman that is badly injured by a bear attack and abandoned by his crew to survive in the wilderness on his own.
To fully embody the character, DiCaprio decided to stick to a purely raw meat diet (which was especially hard, considering he's a vegan) and sleep in real animal carcasses. Now, that's commitment. And this dedication ultimately landed him his first Academy Award win for Best Actor. And he has never looked back.
The Last King of Scotland (2006)
In the film, “The Last King of Scotland,” Forest Whitaker went really deep with his research and portrayal of Ugandan Idi Amin. He went as far as gaining over 50 pounds, learning Swahili, and getting Amin’s dialect down.
That was something which actually took time for the actor to literally yell himself out of — “it wasn’t until the movie was over that I decided I could let go of the character […] I started yelling to get his voice out of me and get my own voice back.” Boy, oh boy, we are not going to lie - that's pretty scary.