Dustin Hoffman is a famous devotee of the ‘The Method’, where an actor tries to get right under the skin of a character to deliver the most authentic performance. The story goes that, on the set of Marathon Man, he stayed up for two nights to shoot the scenes where his character hadn’t slept for 72 hours. When his co-star, Laurence Olivier, saw the state Hoffman was in, he allegedly quipped, “My dear boy, why don’t you just try acting? It’s so much easier.” The tale is the stuff of legends – and probably not entirely true.
However an actor arrives at a performance, some at the top of their game can just turn it on. Take Emma Thompson’s crying scene in Love Actually when the penny drops about the cheating husband.
And then there’s the ghostly father and son scene in my favorite film of the decade, All of Us Strangers. Here’s a link to the scene on Facebook. Best grab the Kleenex first.
Now That’s What I Call Acting, Dear Boy.
