10 Actors Who Went Too Far Preparing For Roles

Prepping for a serious role is serious business, and thanks to method actors like Daniel Day-Lewis, we’ve been graced with some of the most hyperrealistic performances of all time. However, a few Hollywood A-listers have been known to take things too far: freaking out co-stars, permanently altering their bodies, and even putting themselves in harm’s way. 

Drastic weight fluctuations, extreme mental exercises, and literal physical injuries are among the tales of acting gone too far, proving there’s a fine line between commitment to your craft and plain old self-destruction. While it’s true that being a Hollywood star is one of the highest-paying gigs around, enduring the real suffering of your fictional character isn’t technically in the job description. Necessary or not, that hasn’t stopped the actors below from crossing a line for the sake of entertainment. 

10) Dustin Hoffman in Marathon Man

Dustin Hoffman already had a reputation as one of the more committed actors of his era when he starred in Marathon Man in 1976. The film included a scene that required his character to appear as if he hadn’t slept in three days. Rather than leave the movie magic to the makeup team, he decided on full immersion. Hoffman forced himself to stay awake for 72 hours before filming, passing the threshold that doctors have said can cause health problems like organ failure. 

By the time cameras were up, Hoffman was delirious and, according to those on set, reportedly began hallucinating. The experiment became the stuff of Hollywood legend in part thanks to Laurence Olivier, who co-starred in the film. When Olivier saw Hoffman’s condition and learned he had deliberately avoided sleep, he apparently said, “Why don’t you just try acting, dear boy? It’s so much easier.” 

9) Natalie Portman in Black Swan

Natalie Portman’s transformation into ballerina Nina in Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan won her an Oscar for Best Actress in 2010. However, it’s no secret that the prep took a toll on her body. To convincingly play a professional dancer, she put in up to eight hours of training per day and dropped 20 pounds from her already petite frame. She admitted to surviving on little more than carrots and almonds.

The intense physical commitment led to injuries, including a dislocated rib. Portman later reflected that there were some nights she literally thought she was going to die, saying, “It was the first time I understood how you could get so wrapped up in a role that it could sort of take you down.”

8) Adrien Brody in The Pianist

When Adrien Brody took on Roman Polanski’s The Pianist in 2002, he was determined to embody the desperation of Holocaust survivor Władysław Szpilman. Brody not only learned piano well enough to perform Chopin convincingly, but he also gave up his apartment, sold his belongings, and lost more than 30 pounds to physically capture Szpilman’s starvation.

In an interview with PopSugar, he even admitted to isolating himself from friends and family for months in abandoned soviet barracks. But the sacrifice paid off when Brody became the youngest actor ever to win the Academy Award for Best Actor at just 29.

7) Leonardo DiCaprio in The Revenant

DiCaprio’s Oscar-winning performance in The Revenant (2015) has become modern Hollywood mythology. It’s said that in order to portray fur trapper Hugh Glass, DiCaprio endured sub-zero temperatures, crawled through icy rivers, and insisted on doing as many of his own stunts as possible. The actor also ate a raw bison liver on camera, despite being a vegetarian.

Perhaps most infamously, DiCaprio reportedly slept inside animal carcasses to better understand his character’s survival struggle. The extreme prep paid off, DiCaprio finally broke his Oscar losing streak, but it showed just how far he was willing to go for a golden statue.

6) Christian Bale in The Machinist

Christian Bale has become synonymous with wild physical transformations, but none compare to his 2004 role in The Machinist. To play Trevor Reznik, a factory worker suffering from insomnia and paranoia, Bale dropped over 60 pounds, whittling down to 120 pounds on a starvation diet of coffee, an apple, and a can of tuna per day. His skeletal figure was so extreme that it’s still unsettling to look at today.

Bale supposedly denied requests from crew members to see a doctor, even though he had been warned that the crash diet could have caused permanent health issues. In an interview with RadioFree, Bale admitted, “I enjoyed the challenge and the slightly self-destructive urges involved in losing that amount of weight.”Just a year later, he bulked up with an insane workout routine to play Batman in Batman Begins.

5) Jamie Foxx in Ray

To play music legend Ray Charles in the 2004 biopic Ray, Jamie Foxx went to great lengths to try and understand the world from Charles’ point of view. He spent large chunks of his prep time living blind, practicing moving through the world without sight. Things only intensified when filming began; Foxx recalled his eyes being glued shut for 14 hours a day, likening it to a prison sentence.

As part of the prep, Foxx also had to impress the legend himself, and the two met for a “trial-by-jam session,” where he played alongside the musician. Ray Charles gave him his blessing after that moment, and the intensive process began. Aside from intentional periods of blindness, Foxx also studied Braille and lost 35 pounds to capture Charles’ lean frame, earning him a Best Actor Oscar.

4) Halle Berry in Jungle Fever

Before she became a household name, Halle Berry went to dangerous lengths to prove herself in Spike Lee’s Jungle Fever (1991). Playing a crack addict, Berry refused to shower for weeks and spent time in real crack houses to study the environment and its people. The immersion was risky and exposed her to unsafe situations that she later admitted to Sway’s Universe were dangerous and dumb; things she would never do today.

Berry has since said she considered the experience vital for her performance, but it was also a wake-up call about the risks actors take in the name of “authenticity.” Looking back, she’s admitted that no role should require putting yourself in genuine danger just to sell a performance.

3) Daniel Day-Lewis in My Left Foot

Daniel Day-Lewis has long been regarded as the gold standard of method acting, but his commitment has often come at a significant cost. In 1989, for My Left Foot, in which he played writer and painter Christy Brown (who had cerebral palsy), Day-Lewis refused to leave his wheelchair on set. Crew members had to carry him to the bathroom and feed him during breaks.

The extreme posture he maintained, hunched and twisted, reportedly caused him two broken ribs during production. Still, his performance won him his first Academy Award and sealed his reputation as a once-in-a-generation actor willing to push his body to the breaking point for our sake.

2) Jared Leto in Suicide Squad

Stories of Jared Leto’s antics while preparing to play the Joker in Suicide Squad (2016) were floating around the industry even before the movie bombed in theaters. Leto allegedly immersed himself so deeply into the role that he sent grotesque “gifts” to his co-stars, including a dead rat to Margot Robbie, while others received used condoms and bullets. But rather than winning him an Oscar like others on this list, the ridiculous on-set behavior became a liability for Leto, after critics lampooned his performance.

Director David Ayer later defended Leto, saying it was all part of making The Joker “comic book accurate.” He was following in the footsteps of the late Heath Ledger, after all, who committed so wholly to his portrayal of the villain that many believe it led to his mental decline. But since Leto didn’t nail it by all accounts, his “method acting” appeared more like an immature prank or edgy PR stunt than actual dedication to the craft.

1) Shia LaBeouf in Fury

Shia LaBeouf getting a chest tattoo for The Tax Collector was insane, but what he did to play a soldier in Fury (2014) is even more shocking. According to a Dazed interview, the Disney star-turned-method actor reportedly pulled a tooth without anesthesia, refused to bathe for weeks to simulate trench stench, spent days “watching horses die,” and even cut his own face repeatedly to create realistic scars. Makeup artists offered to do it for him, but LaBeouf insisted on using a knife so the wounds would look authentic.

Ayer, who also directed this film, later confirmed LaBeouf’s extreme methods, which disturbed some of his co-stars. While his performance was considered transcendent by some critics, many thought the behavior crossed the line from method acting into self-harm. It left audiences wondering whether the performance justified the lengths he went to, or if the controversial actor was chasing notoriety at the cost of his well-being.

Do you think method acting is worth the risks? Let us know your thoughts in a comment below, and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!

Jared Leto Went Full Method (Again) On Tron: Ares & Jeff Bridges Ignored His 1 Rule