But all the best actors are Method Actors!

Woh, slow down there, I haven’t flipped my wig. It isn’t time to close up the studio and pack me off to the funny farm THIS week.

The title is a quote from a discussion, well, no, from EVERY discussion I’ve ever had with the over-enthusiastic novices of the grand church of Method.

These are their many basic gripes (I have them in emails, twitter messages, comments on this blog and You Tube):

A) All the Best Actors are Method Actors.

B) That this is true because most great actors are Method actors and they win the lion’s share of Oscars.

Let me respond with two equally true facts.

1) Method acting is the dominant approach, therefore, there were not alternative options before.

2) Since 1) is true, chances are that those people eligible to VOTE in the Oscars probably have a background similar to those they are voting for. They probably enjoy, nay – they probably are compelled to vote for emotive acting because they believe that IS good acting. But watching people emote as a sign of good acting IS a sign created by the Method school, emotional truth. If you see THAT, then why wouldn’t you vote for it?

That’s interesting.

The other thing is that Method actors and their mentors have the all or nothing mentality. Either you are a Method actor or you must be proposing a more superficial, less convincing, less truthful, less X, Y, Z performance. That’s simply not true either. Just because our aim is not to put our students/actors through the emotional ringer doesn’t make them less convincing. But again, see 2) above – if we’re used to emotive presentation, and if we EXPECT that style of performance, then when you see someone without snot coming out of their nose, you notice it’s different.

So to conclude. Whether you like Method or not, I don’t care. What I can say is, things are changing. Other options are becoming available and whilst Method acting is still dominant in the US (in the UK it’s haphazard Stanislavski at best or the toolbox approach or the Linguini method) – there’s room for new approaches and they will prizes and impress audiences. It may take a while, but there is a tide change, gathering pace and we will see its effects over the next 10 maybe 20 years, good things are worth the wait.