Comments on: Getting out of character?

Question: Getting out of character?

jrb223 — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 08:31:52 -0800

What are some famous/infamous examples of actors getting so into character that they either have trouble getting out of character or the experience does some long-term psychological damage?

I'm actually posting this for a friend who is working on a project where answers to this question will be useful. I was stumped by it -- I could certainly imagine instances of physical damage from weight loss/gain for films, but psychological damage I was not so sure. Any ideas?

By: amro

amro — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 08:37:32 -0800

Supposedly, Heath Ledger got waaaay into his Joker character and it caused him psychological problems.

By: sanka

sanka — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 08:37:47 -0800

I have a hard time believing Christian Bale didn't have some sort of permanent damage from his weight loss in The Machinist. Even the mindset needed to do that to yourself would probably have some lasting impact.

By: mpls2

mpls2 — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 08:39:02 -0800

Tippi Hedron for The Birds

By: FlamingBore

FlamingBore — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 08:40:23 -0800

amro - I've read lots about it and according to all reliable sources that's not the case. Wasn't there, don't know - just saying that I've read/heard otherwise.

By: kelseyq

kelseyq — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 08:40:45 -0800

Daniel Day-Lewis? I'm thinking specifically of the incident where he supposedly saw his father's ghost on stage during a production of Hamlet

By: amro

amro — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 08:42:17 -0800

FlamingBore - That's why I said "supposedly"... I don't know either, but I've heard it.

By: grumblebee

grumblebee — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 08:50:50 -0800

I've been working with actors for twenty years, and I think 99% of such stories are bullshit. When you act -- particularly on film -- you're in a room full of people (technicians, etc.) and you constantly have to start and stop. You shoot about a minute of the film and then you go wait in your trailer for four hours while they re-light the set.

There are plenty of disturbed actors, but most of them got that way via their upbringing or during off-work hours. It's usually about drug abuse, relationship problems, etc. If it is about "the business," it usually about the non-artistic side, e.g. directors abusing child actors or casting-couch issues.

I've never heard of a single actor who fell apart BECAUSE he was playing "Hamlet."

These sorts of urban legends will always be with us, because people want to believe that the drama in the film or play extends beyond the story itself.

By: mkb

mkb — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 08:51:45 -0800

Hilary Swank after Boys Don't Cry, although I can't find a reference.

By: highfidelity

highfidelity — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 08:56:02 -0800

Didn't Val Kilmer develop a drug problem after experimenting with them as "research" for portraying Jim Morrison?

By: roofus

roofus — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 08:57:29 -0800

Herzog and Kinski on the set of Fitzcarraldo has to be the most famous example. Not sure if you can claim Herzog was in character, but he was sort of method-directing with disastrous consequences.

By: Skot

Skot — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 09:05:46 -0800

I've been working with actors for twenty years, and I think 99% of such stories are bullshit.

I've been an actor for twenty years, and I'm inclined to agree with you, but that's not what the poster is asking.

So: I've heard the Heath Ledger stories too, and while I cannot vouch for them one way or another, they are an example. Another anecdotal example would be Bob Hoskins, who claimed to suffer from hallucinations during and after the filming of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? I definitely remember Hoskins talking about this on some late night show at the time.

By: acidic

acidic — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 09:16:24 -0800

Not psychological damage (well, besides Girl Interrupted), but there's a Vanity Fair article arguing that Angelina comes to seriously inhabit her movie roles.

By: Zambrano

Zambrano — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 09:17:08 -0800

James Gandolfini (Tony Soprano) now regularly hangs out with real mafia people- according to a director I know.

By: jrb223

jrb223 — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 09:19:58 -0800

I am actually inclined to agree with you too, Grumblebee, but Skot has hit the nail on the head that the question is designed to help us learn what the more well-known, if apocryphal, stories there are out there on the subject. Thanks for all the answers so far everyone, keep em coming.

By: clunkyrobot

clunkyrobot — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 09:25:22 -0800

Wooderson Syndrome

By: Rewind

Rewind — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 09:26:49 -0800

Robert Downey Jr. has blamed his drug addiction on his portrayal of Julian Wells in the movie Less Than Zero.

By: Fuzzy Skinner

Fuzzy Skinner — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 09:32:05 -0800

Janet Leigh would not take showers again after Psycho.

By: Zambrano

Zambrano — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 09:35:42 -0800

Gandofini's personality was obviously affected for him to enjoy the company of murderers.

By: grumblebee

grumblebee — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 09:37:11 -0800

Okay, getting more into the spirit of things:

-- When Robert Wise directed "West Side Story," he didn't allow the actors playing the Jets to socialize with the actors playing the Sharks. They only time they met was in their antagonistic scenes together. Susan Oakes played Anybodys, a girl who definitely wasn't a Shark but who wanted to be part of the Jets (and was rejected by them). I heard her say, in an interview, that the shooting was traumatic for her, because the actors got so into their gang identities that no one would talk to her.

-- Famously, Dustin Hoffman kept himself up for days and made a wreck of himself to play his part in "Marathon Man." When Laurence Olivier saw the state he was in, he said, "Next time, try acting."

-- Not exactly what you're looking for, but Jimmy Steward had a doctor give him a drug to temporarily make him almost unable to speak so that he could believable play the final "horse voice" scene in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington."

-- Sue Lyon played "Lolita" in the Kubrick version. Here's a snippet from the Wikipedia article about her:

She was diagnosed as a manic-depressive and was prescribed lithium. She later said she had struggled on and off with mental issues since she was a teenager.[7]

In recent years, Lyon has been bitter about Lolita, the film that made her a star at such a tender age. In 1998, speaking with the Reuters news service regarding Adrian Lyne's remake of the film, Lyon said, "I am appalled they should revive the film that caused my destruction as a person."

By: grumblebee

grumblebee — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 09:43:52 -0800

This also doesn't exactly fit what you're asking, but I once heard Laura Dern say that, when she was little, she was watching TV and "Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte" came on. She saw her dad, Bruce Dern, get decapitated. She went screaming to her mother. Her parents were divorced, and her mom had to get her dad on the phone to prove to Laura that he wasn't dead.

By: the cuban

the cuban — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 09:44:44 -0800

James Fox in Performance. To prepare for the role, I believe he hung out with Johnny Binden and other Cray associates. After filming he left acting and joined a cult.

By: [NOT HERMITOSIS-IST]

[NOT HERMITOSIS-IST] — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 09:46:31 -0800

Bjork got incredibly deeply emotionally involved with her character in Dancer in the Dark, resulting in now-famous ordeals with director Lars von Trier on-set.

From Wikipedia:

Actress Björk, who is known primarily as a contemporary composer, had rarely acted before, and has described the process of making this film as so emotionally taxing that she would not appear in any film ever again (although in 2005, she appeared in Matthew Barney's Drawing Restraint 9). She had disagreements with the director over the content of the film, wanting the ending to be more uplifting.[citation needed] Deneuve and others have described her performance as feeling rather than acting. Björk has said that it is a misunderstanding that she was put off acting by this film; rather, she never wanted to act but made an exception for Lars von Trier.

By: grumblebee

grumblebee — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 09:46:54 -0800

Then of course, you get actors who wanted to keep on playing their parts after death: Belu Lugosi was buried in his Dracula cape. James "Scottie" Doohan had his ashes shot into space.

By: orrnyereg

orrnyereg — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 09:47:12 -0800

I've heard that Matt Damon has a heart condition resulting from losing so much weight for his role in 'Courage Under Fire'. Is that what you're looking for?

By: scody

scody — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 09:47:13 -0800

Martin Sheen, like his character Capt. Willard, had a bit of a breakdown (along with just about everyone else on set) during the filming of Apocalypse Now (scroll down for some of the details).

By: emd3737

emd3737 — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 09:48:27 -0800

I read a magazine article once that described how Johnny Depp got waaaay into his role as Hunter S. Thompson in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

no time to Google it right now, though.

By: Freedomboy

Freedomboy — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 09:50:37 -0800

Tony Cliffton

By: Skot

Skot — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 09:52:11 -0800

I didn't help the thread out by going after Grumblebee either. I'm sorry.

ANYWAY. The book The Devil's Candy is about what amounts to full-production madness during the filming of the entirely horrible Bonfire of the Vanities. It's hilarious.

Similarly, Hearts of Darkness is a harrowing documentary about the legendary filming of Apocalypse Now, where it can be credibly argued that Coppola nearly lost his mind for a while.

By: Class Goat

Class Goat — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 09:58:53 -0800

In "An Officer and a Gentleman", Louis Gossett Jr played a drill instructor. I saw an interview with him where he said that he really did get into that mode during filming, and as a result was rather difficult to be around on the set.

He also said that the directors gave him a chance to read the script, and he said he wanted to play that role. They said, OK we'll rewrite it to make it more sympathetic. His response was, No, I want to play that role.

He won an Academy Award for it.

By: adamrice

adamrice — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 10:28:51 -0800

By: grumblebee

grumblebee — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 10:42:02 -0800

I've read that during the shooting of the film Gosford Park, the actors playing servants only socialized with other servant actors off-set, likewise the aristocrat actors, reproducing the class divisions they were portraying.

There are tons of stories like this from the filming of the British series "Upstairs Downstairs." The actors playing the servants (though they were the leads) were given the worst dressing rooms, etc.

By: grumblebee

grumblebee — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 10:45:53 -0800

I've read that during the shooting of the film Gosford Park, the actors playing servants only socialized with other servant actors off-set, likewise the aristocrat actors, reproducing the class divisions they were portraying.

I hope I'm not stirring up trouble, again, but this is exactly the sort of thing I was talking about earlier. If you watch the movie, you'll see that in most of the scenes, the servants were with the servants and the aristocrats were with the aristocrats. That means that during the filming, the servant actors didn't get to see much of the aristocrats and vice versa. So I'm guess it's more a matter of hanging out with the people you're working with than life imitating art. Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro didn't hang out during the filming of "The Godfather, Part II," because they didn't have any scenes together.

By: fearfulsymmetry

fearfulsymmetry — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 10:52:23 -0800

Scott Glen - in The Silence Of The Lambs

"After working with John Douglas for some time Scott Glenn thanked him and said how fascinating it was to have been allowed into his world. Douglas laughed at this comment and told Glenn that if he really wanted to get into his world, he should listen to an audio tape of serial killers Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris torturing, raping and murdering two teenage girls. Glenn listened to less than one minute of the tape, and has since said that he feels he lost a sense of innocence in doing so and that he has never been able to forget what he heard."

and in Backdraft

"In preparation for the filming of Backdraft, he rode along with the firemen in the Chicago area and was injured when exposed to active fire."

By: Kickstart70

Kickstart70 — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 11:00:01 -0800

According to IMDB: Viggo Mortensen....

"Got so into his character of Aragorn that director Peter Jackson once addressed him as Aragorn for over half an hour, and Mortensen didn't even realize it."

"He became good friends with the close-knit stunt men on the "Lord of the Rings" films, but they were wary of doing fight scenes with him because, carried away with the intensity of his character Aragorn, he would frequently "really go at them" and leave the other combatants in bruises."

"I was on my way out of a Sunday rehearsal. When I was walking out of the gym, all sort of sweaty, half in street clothes and half in Aragorn's clothes, waiving the sword around, trying to keep a mental picture of what we've just done. Just walking down the street, down to where my car was parked, on a Sunday afternoon, waiving the sword around, looking like some desperate Rasputin character. Cops car comes: there's been some report..."

By: grumblebee

grumblebee — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 11:01:03 -0800

From IMDB's entry on Klute:

"According to her autobiography, Jane Fonda hung out with call girls and pimps for a week before beginning this film in order to prepare for her role. When none of the pimps offered to "represent" her, she became convinced she wasn't desirable enough to play a prostitute and urged the director to replace her with friend Faye Dunaway."

By: wheat

wheat — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 11:18:28 -0800

There are lots of tales of "method" actors annoying others by refusing to step out of character. I remember an E! Hollywood True Story mentioning that Judd Nelson nearly getting fired from The Breakfast Club for such behavior (IMDB triva page supports it, for what that's worth).

By: nushustu

nushustu — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 11:48:21 -0800

Didn't Spielberg make the cast of Saving Private Ryan go to boot camp? But he didn't make Matt Damon go, so the cast would sort of hate him for real, which helped with their acting.

Or I could have dreamed all of that.

By: miss lynnster

miss lynnster — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 12:00:00 -0800

Well, allegedly River Phoenix turned to heroin to get into character for My Own Private Idaho.

Wikipedia: What appeared at the outset to be a bright career prospect soon turned dark as River Phoenix was overly committed to becoming his character, drug-addicted street hustler Mike Waters. Almost immediately rumors started swirling back to L.A. that Phoenix and his castmates were using heroin and other drugs and partying hard throughout the nights. This approach proved dangerous given the role of Mike Waters. Eric Alan Edwards, one of the film's directors of photography remembers, "He looked like a street kid. In a very raw way he wore that role."

People Mag: In fact, there had been speculation about Phoenix's drug use for nearly two years. It was on the Portland set of My Own Private Idaho, the story of a band of drug-taking street hustlers and male prostitutes, that rumors first began to circulate that some of the film's actors—Phoenix among them—had begun using heroin.

By: grumblebee

grumblebee — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 12:31:36 -0800

Well, allegedly River Phoenix turned to heroin to get into character for My Own Private Idaho.

I can't tell you how many actors I've met who got hooked on smoking (regular cigarettes) from having to do it in plays. Nowadays, they generally use herbal cigs.

By: bristolcat

bristolcat — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 13:15:47 -0800

I don't know if this is the kind of thing you are looking for, but back in 2003 I was really into the show "Monk" on USA Network which starred (still stars) Tony Shaloub as a detective with a very severe case of OCD. I don't know if it is still on there, but I remember in a Q&A with Tony on the USA website for Monk in which a fan asked if the character's OCD habits were rubbing off on him. His answer, in effect, was "Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes."

By: bensherman

bensherman — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 13:40:51 -0800

didn't Ned Beatty have some trouble post-deliverance?

By: PatoPata

PatoPata — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 14:40:03 -0800

By: zardoz

zardoz — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 18:05:59 -0800

The now infamous mugshot of Nick Nolte's DUI apparently happened at the end (or just after) filming Hulk, in which he plays a whacked-out mad scientist. Which explains the hair.

By: aeschenkarnos

aeschenkarnos — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 18:54:57 -0800

George Clooney, during Syriana. He said (paraphrased): "Everyone has a year in their life during which they age ten years. This was mine."

By: miss lynnster

miss lynnster — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 23:07:52 -0800

I remember hearing as a child that Jonathan Winters had a breakdown and was found speaking in the voices of his characters. I couldn't find anything online except references to a bipolar diagnosis and "breakdown" in 1959.

Actually, my dad used to tell a story about how he witnessed Jonathan Winters having a mental breakdown in an airport. And since there's an entire write-up about him on bipolar.about.com I'm guessing it was probably a true story. Who knows whether the bipolar condition is what led him to comedy or vice versa, though. Most comedians I've known were either depressed or bipolar... kinda ironic how a comedy career often attracts naturally unhappy people.

By: Scram

Scram — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 02:51:04 -0800

Yeah, grumblebee, and among them was Tatum O'Neal, who was eight when she had to smoke lettuce cigs on screen in "Paper Moon," but soon turned to the harder stuff (crack, most recently).

By: miss lynnster

miss lynnster — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 10:11:17 -0800

Well, I have heard that lettuce is a gateway vegetable... totally makes sense.

I'd say what screwed Tatum O'Neal up more than anything was having a seriously messed up family. It's easy to see that her relationship with her father left a giant void she couldn't seem to fill. I mean, not only is he physically abusive (it's well documented) but the guy encouraged her to snort cocaine as an early teen so she could lose weight... he's never exactly been the most protective, nurturing or healthy parent. She clearly needed someone to care for her, and with the cards she was dealt it's no wonder she ended up lost. She may have had privilege in other ways, but that means little when what someone really needs is love and support. Moral of the story: I wouldn't make lettuce the bad guy here, I'd totally blame Ryan O'Neal, who is (allegedly) one of the suckiest fathers imaginable. I mean, this says it all:

"...when - out of despair (from his) taunting - Tatum tried to commit suicide by slashing her wrists, Ryan merely declared: 'You cut the wrong way.'"

I have far more sympathy for Tatum O'Neal's self-destructive choices than Amy Winehouse's. At least Amy has a caring family that clearly worries about her well-being. Tatum was mostly alone, well, except when she was married to John McEnroe (which was a great idea because, of course, he wasn't volatile like her father or anything).

I'm just glad Jodie Foster avoided a life of prostitution...

By: Bhob

Bhob — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 22:19:08 -0800

The Jonathan Winters incident happened May 12, 1959 and was a front page news story the next day. The 32-year-old Winters was involved in a dispute with the custodian of a square-rigged sailing ship on display at the San Francisco Embarcadero, claiming that he wanted to climb the rigging and jump off. Police arrived, and Winters identified himself as "John Q. from outer space." Newspapers carried photos of him making wild faces as he was taken away by police. Stories quoted unnamed psychiatrists as saying he was "quite disturbed" and in need of "long-term" care. The next day, Winters wife arrived from the East Coast and had him transferred to a private mental hospital ten miles south of San Francisco.

Three years earlier, the first use of videotape on network television was on Winters' TV series. Tape made it possible for Winters to appear with himself, or rather, to have one of his characters talk to another of his characters.