Natalie Portman Calls Method Acting a ‘Luxury That Women Can’t Afford’ and Has Never Tried It

Natalie Portman’s career has spanned an Oscar-winning role and Marvel blockbusters, but what it has never included is Method acting. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal Magazine, the “May December” star revealed she’s never once tried to Method act during her career — and even said such a technique is not something many women can afford to do as actors.

“I’ve gotten very into roles, but I think it’s honestly a luxury that women can’t afford,” Portman explained. “I don’t think that children or partners would be very understanding of, you know, me making everyone call me ‘Jackie Kennedy’ all the time.”

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According to Portman, going full Method actor just wouldn’t align with her role as a mother. That’s not to say she doesn’t do serious prep. She trained as a ballet dancer for months to get into character for “Black Swan,” even going so far as to reshape her diet to just almonds and carrots. But Portman is still able to separate herself from the character she’s playing during production.

Portman’s comments about female actors and Method acting follow a recent statement by her contemporary Carey Mulligan, who never tried the technique until very recently when she took on a role in Bradley Cooper’s “Maestro.”

“There was a part of me as an actor that always felt like, ‘Well, I’m never going to be one of those actors that keeps their dialect in between takes,'” she told Variety. “There was a part of me that was slightly held back, or maybe nervous of completely committing to something. But that was what Bradley asked, basically, at the beginning of the process. He was like, ‘If you’re going to do this, you just have to fully, fully do it.’ When he said that, I was like, ‘Okay, I’m going to absolutely do it all.’ I’m going to do all the research. I’m going to do all the dialect stuff. I’m going to do everything, so that when I get on set, I am 100% able to just feel like I’m onstage and have that sense of ‘I don’t remember what happened.'”

Cooper, on the other hand, is well-known for staying in character during production and adopted Method acting techniques, as are other male actors such as Daniel Day-Lewis, Jared Leto and Jeremy Strong. Jared Leto’s reputation as a Method actor is so ubiquitous that he recently mocked himself while presenting at the 2024 Golden Globes.

“I have been in presenter mode for weeks now,” Leto told the audience. “I’ve been doing research developing my character, incessantly reminding everyone around me to please call me by my character name, dammit…I’ve also learned the art of holding an envelope. It’s about the angle, the grip. It’s about the subtlety, the meaningful connection between presenter partner and paper. It is a deeply emotional journey.”

Leto’s Method acting stories have been well-documented, whether he’s gaining or losing weight for a role (he shed nearly 40 pounds for his Oscar-winning role in “Dallas Buyers Club”) or getting so into the Joker for “Suicide Squad” that he sent his cast members disgusting presents.

“I appreciate the term, but I think it’s a little cloudy, the definition,” Leto told Variety in 2020 about being labeled a Method actor. “And it could also be really pretentious as well. I was thinking of it as my job to show up and do the best work that I can. It’s my job to show up, do whatever I can, to be over-prepared. And to deliver. It’s also my job to show up and, you know, be a pleasure to work with. And to be collaborative, and to have a good experience on set.”

Method acting has proven to be a divisive technique. Mads Mikkelsen made headlines in April 2022 for slamming the acting style, calling it “pretentious” and adding: “It’s bullshit. Preparation, you can take into insanity. What if it’s a shit film — what do you think you achieved? Am I impressed that you didn’t drop character? You should have dropped it from the beginning! How do you prepare for a serial killer? You gonna spend two years checking it out?”

Andrew Garfield, who went Method for his role in Martin Scorsese’s “Silence” by starving himself of food and sex in order to play a Jesuit priest, went on to say that “there been a lot of misconceptions about what method acting is, I think. People are still acting in that way, and it’s not about being an asshole 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.”

Portman has been making the press rounds in support of her role in Todd Haynes’ “May December.” Read her full interview with The Wall Street Journal Magazine here.

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