What is Method Acting

What is “Method Acting”? If one listens to either its critics or supporters it is a form of acting where the actor mystically “becomes” the character or tries to somehow literally live the character in life. Like all clichés, both explanations are false. When Lee Strasberg defined what is popularly known as “Method Acting” he used a simple declarative sentence: “Method acting is what all actors have always done whenever they acted well.” Now, to the casual observer, that may sound like a rather egotistical comment suggesting that only actors who studied and used Strasberg’s particular method of work were good actors. But such an interpretation is the polar opposite of Lee Strasberg’s meaning.

He meant that what is called “Method Acting” is nothing new. In fact, it is as old as Western Civilization, as the Greeks were the first to identify and practice the kind of acting usually associated only with the emergence of Lee Strasberg and the Stanislavsky tradition. Aristotle said that the secret to moving the passions in others is to be moved oneself and the actor is capable of doing this by bringing to mind “visions” [sensory images] of experiences in life which are no longer present. In his way, Aristotle was stating the core principle of The Method – the creative play of the affective memory in the actor’s imagination as the foundation for (re)experiencing in acting.

In previous centuries, what we now know as “Method Acting” was called “feeling the role”, “Romantic acting”, “emotional acting”, “divine inspiration”, “the muses”, etc. These poetic terms attempted to describe the organic process of creativity the talented actor follows when the goal of all good acting is achieved: (re)experiencing the fiction of the story as if it were true and happening now. In short, good acting is when the actor’s work ultimately leads to organic (re)experiencing on stage or before the camera and bad acting is when the actor’s efforts seek or resign themselves to merely physically indicating the thoughts, feelings, desires and behavior of the character.

From the ancient Greek actor Polus, to the genius actor of the Romantic Age, the Englishman Edmund Kean and onto Eleanora Duse, Laurette Taylor, Mikhail Chekhov, Kim Stanley, Marlon Brando, Vanessa Redgrave, Meryl Streep and Daniel Day-Lewis, whenever an actor has acted well he or she was consciously or unconsciously using the principles of acting discovered – not invented – but discovered by Stanislavsky and known today as “Method Acting.”

“Method Acting” is simply the most recent term attached to a centuries-old understanding of what it means to say, “that was good acting.”