Kristen Stewart thinks male actors turn to method work because acting is “inherently submissive.”
During an interview with The New York Times, Stewart was asked about method acting after the conversation turned to Marlon Brando’s work on “Superman: The Movie.” The legendary actor reportedly would not pronounce the word “Krypton” correctly on purpose as a way to retain some of himself while working on a movie that was viewed by some as a step beneath his prior films.
“Performance is inherently vulnerable and therefore quite embarrassing and unmasculine,” Stewart said. “There’s no bravado in suggesting that you’re a mouthpiece for someone else’s ideas. It’s inherently submissive. Have you ever heard of a female actor that was method?
She continued: “Men are aggrandized for retaining self. Brando sounds like a hero, doesn’t he? If a woman did that, it would be different. If you have to do 50 push-ups before your close-up or refuse to say a word a certain way — I mean, Brando, [expletive], I’m not coming for him. There’s a common act that happens before the acting happens on set: If they can protrude out of the vulnerability and feel like a gorilla pounding their chest before they cry on camera, it’s a little less embarrassing. It also makes it seem like a magic trick, like it is so impossible to do what you’re doing that nobody else could do it.”
Stewart had plenty to say about the movie-making process in the interview beyond method acting. One of her biggest gripes was her experiences with bigger studio movies beginning with the “Twilight” franchise and most recently with the 2019 “Charlie’s Angels” remake. She described the day-to-day, made-by-committee process as a bit soul-sucking.
“Test screenings. Literal on-paper numbered equations that tell you whether or not a joke is funny,” Stewart said. “Ten people who are over the age of 50 and male weighing in on what my queer character’s hair should look like. Completely sucking out the colloquialism, anything specific. Day to day, you watch something with detail and color become gray. It’s dispiriting. It’s demoralizing. It’s also entirely misogynistic and chauvinistic and not the realm that creates an environment for me to want to be vulnerable in, and that’s my whole job as an actor.”
She added: “When I was younger, I was kind of greedy. I was like, maybe I could make that work, maybe that’ll be fun. But it wasn’t. It’s like, I don’t want to not get invited to the party, but then you go to the party and you’re like, this party sucks.”
