Spider-Man Star Andrew Garfield Defends Method Acting

It’s no secret that Andrew Garfield is currently thriving in Hollywood. In addition to returning as Peter Parker/Spider-Man in Spider-Man: No Way Home, the actor received his second Academy Award nomination this year for playing Jonathan Larson in tick, tick…BOOM!. He also recently received an Emmy nomination for playing Detective Jeb Pyre in the limited series Under the Banner of Heaven. When it comes to acting, there are plenty of different approaches, but one of the most controversial is method acting. Method actors often embody their roles on and off camera/stage which can lead to some unfortunate behavior depending on the character they’re playing. During a recent interview on the WTF with Marc Maron podcast (via The Los Angeles Times), Garfield defended method acting.

“There [have] been a lot of misconceptions about what Method acting is, I think,” Garfield explained. “People are still acting in that way, and it’s not about being an a- to everyone on set. It’s actually just about living truthfully under imagined circumstances, and being really nice to the crew simultaneously, and 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.”

“I’m kind of bothered by the misconception, I’m kind of bothered by this idea that ‘Method acting is f- b-.’ No, I don’t think you know what Method acting is if you’re calling it b-, or you just worked with someone who claims to be a Method actor who isn’t actually acting the Method at all,” Garfield added. “It’s also very private. I don’t want people to see the f- pipes of my toilet. I don’t want them to see how I’m making the sausage.”

Recently, another Marvel actor came out with an opposite take on method acting. Black Panther‘s Martin Freeman slammed the performance style during an episode of the Off Menu podcast (via The Telegraph), calling it a “highly impractical way of working.” The topic turned to Jim Carrey’s performance in Man on the Moon in which he played famous comedian Andy Kaufman. There was even a documentary released titled Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond which chronicled Carrey’s journey to becoming Kaufman and the production difficulties his method acting caused.

“For me, and I’m genuinely sure Jim Carrey is a lovely and smart person, but it was the most self-aggrandizing, selfish, narcissistic f*cking bollocks I have ever seen,” Freeman shared. “When younger, I think it’s quite common to think that completely losing yourself is the goal [of acting] because it feels grown-up and it feels proper. But the older I’ve got, the more I don’t really look to that. To be honest, it’s quite a pain in the arse when someone ‘loses themselves.’ It is a massive pain in the arse because it’s no longer a craft and a job.”

“The idea that anything in our culture would celebrate or support it is deranged, literally deranged,” Freeman added. “You need to keep grounded in reality … That’s not to say you don’t lose yourself in the time between ‘action’ and ‘cut,’ but I think the rest of it is absolute pretentious nonsense and highly amateurish. It is not professional. Get the job done, do your work.”

Do you have a stance on method acting? Tell us in the comments!