‘Under The Banner Of Heaven’s Andrew Garfield Talks “Misconceptions About What Method Acting Is”

Matt Grobar

Two-time Oscar nominee Andrew Garfield has come out in defense of Method acting, making the case that the craft is misunderstood. His comments come following those of such actors as David Harbour, Mads Mikkelsen and Sebastian Stan, who have respectively referred to the method as “dangerous,” “bullsh*t” and “self-indulgent.”

“There’s been a lot of misconceptions around what Method acting is, I think…It’s not about being an asshole to everyone on set,” Garfield told Marc Maron in an episode of his Maron’s podcast WTF published Monday. “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.”

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Garfield went on to say that he is “kind of bothered” by those who would dismiss the method outright, given past examples of actors using it to justify bad on-set behavior. “I’m kind of bothered by this idea that ‘Method acting’s f*cking bullsh*t.’ No, I don’t think you know what Method acting is if you’re calling it bullsh*t — or you just worked with someone who claims to be a Method actor, that isn’t actually acting the Method at all,” he said. “And it’s also very private…I think the process…I don’t want people to see the f***ing pipes of my toilet. I don’t want them to see how I’m making the sausage.”

In conversation with Maron, Garfield also went into his own Method approach in preparing for Martin Scorsese’s 2016 film Silence, which had him playing Portuguese Jesuit priest Sebastião Rodrigues — remaining celibate and fasting for six months out of his full year of prep. “It was very cool, man,” said Garfield. “I had some pretty wild, trippy experiences from starving myself of sex and food for that period of time.”

Garfield’s WTF appearance came as part of the promotional campaign for his performance in FX’s true crime miniseries Under the Banner of Heaven, based on Jon Krakauer’s book of the same name, which recently landed him his first Emmy nomination. The show created by Dustin Lance Black centers on  devout detective Jeb Pyre (Garfield), whose faith is tested as he investigates a brutal murder seemingly connected to an esteemed Utah family’s spiral into LDS fundamentalism and their distrust in the government.

Garfield’s Emmy nomination came in the category of Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie where he is nommed alongside Colin Firth (The Staircase), Oscar Isaac (Scenes from a Marriage), Michael Keaton (Dopesick), Himesh Patel (Station Eleven) and Sebastian Stan (Pam & Tommy).

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