Kristen Stewart Says Acting Is ‘Unmasculine’ and Asks: ‘Have You Ever Heard of a Female Actor That Was Method?’

https://variety.com/2025/film/news/kristen-stewart-acting-unmasculine-female-actor-method-1236602770/

34 comments

  1. > “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?”

    > “Brando sounds like a hero, doesn’t he? If a woman did that, it would be different,” she said. “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.”

    > She contiuned. “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.”

  4. Unfortunately the article does not give justice to the interview. It’s a really insightful conversation

  6. Umm actually, Charlize Theron won an Oscar for playing a serial killer. For which she did some method acting 🤓

  7. I don’t think I’ve ever heard about method acting except when it’s mentioned how people use it as an excuse to be a douchebag.

  10. People spend wayyyyy too much time discussing “masculinity” these days.

  11. Rosalind Pike applied method acting when she did Gone Girl.

  12. Montgomery Clift, Ellen Burstyn, Kim Stanley, and Paul Newman are method actors. I don’t think most people would think that and now associate it with the types of roles Brando or Daniel Day Lewis did.

  14. Ms. Stewart succumbs to the fallacy that masculinity is somehow limited to dominance and aggression. This is as misguided as suggesting that femininity is limited to lipstick and skirts.

  18. One of the best interviews I’ve ever seen. Was not really a fan of Stewart but I am now! A very intelligent and interesting perspective.

  19. I don’t think she has a very healthy understanding of masculinity, tbh. Like, come on, Kristen. In a world where toxic masculinity has run amok, promoting the idea that vulnerability and emotional openness are inherently antithetical to manhood and masculinity is the opposite of what we should be doing.

  20. Meryl Streep would like a word, amongst many others. Not to say that all of their acting is strictly method, but they have utilized method acting in certain roles.

  21. This is a pretty reductive and counterproductive take. It’s like she wants to take a shot at male chauvinism or toxic masculinity among the members of the acting craft, like sure. You can definitely find examples of that and take your shots and they will land easily.

    Saying _all method actors are somehow male chauvinist or engaging in toxic masculinity_?? Saying that acting is “unmasculine”?

    That is a wild haymaker looping around and punching herself in the face. What a comically ridiculous take.

    As is characterizing acting as a purely submissive action. It’s not fucking possession, lol. And is submissiveness an intrinsic quality of femininity, is that she’s intending to state here? That would be very superficial lip service to feminism that manages to accomplish the exact opposite of the goal – this argument just reinforces damaging gender stereotypes and norms that feminism (rightly) states are the problem to begin with.

  22. Only male actors only using method is an interesting thought. I think her point is that in order to learn how to be vulnerable (seen as feminine) they have to use a method. Not saying I agree but this is a broader case of how males are raised in our society than just an acting approach.

  23. > ‘Have You Ever Heard of a Female Actor That Was Method?’

    Marilyn Monroe, Jane Fonda, Sally Field, Laura Dern, Lady Gaga, Cicely Tyson, Angelina Jolie, Scarlett Johansen, Chandra Wilson, Rachel Broshanan, Rosario Dawson, Claire Danes, Barbara Streisand, Sophia Lilis, Rebecca deMornay, Sienna Miller, Sissy Spacek, Bridget Fonda, Uma Thurman, Amy Madigan, and Linda Hamilton all went to the Strasberg institute.

    What a dumb thing to say.

  24. I challenge her to consider many of Melissa McCarthy’s comedic roles as “vulnerable”.

    Women give challenging and strong performances. I’m really disappointed in her backwards gender essentialism here.

  25. I do think this interview has been somewhat sensationalized, because Kristen does have a valid point here.

    Yes, the Method is used by male and female actors and it’s not uncommon as an acting tool — I have several actor friends who have used aspects in their toolboxes to prepare for scenes or find the right connection when playing a role.

    But Kristen is right to call out the fact that being celebrated as Method is almost exclusively a privilege of male actors. Some of the behaviors involved are utterly self-indulgent and outrageous when you think about it:

    * Dustin Hoffman physically and emotionally abusing Meryl Streep on “Kramer vs. Kramer” “for the good of the movie.” He was also famously difficult on “Marathon Man” and stayed up for two days to prepare for a torture scene, was a total mess, and that’s when Olivier famously asked him, “Why don’t you just try acting, dear boy?”
    * Daniel Day Lewis requiring the crew of “My Left Foot” to physically move him around and even feed him by hand in between takes. Or when he refused modern medicine for pneumonia on “Gangs of New York” and demanded that cast and crew call him “Mr. President” off camera in “Lincoln.”
    * Leonardo di Caprio sleeping in animal carcasses to get in character for “The Revenant.”
    * And of course examples like Shia LeBeouf, Jared Leto, and others actively doing grotesque and disturbing things to female co-stars in the name of “character.”

    Meanwhile, female actors who are remotely detail-oriented or even slightly Method are coded as “difficult” and openly or subtly blacklisted. The differences in how actors are discussed in terms of gender on this stuff are right there. No women could ever get away with this kind of unprofessionalism described above. But men are celebrated for it.

    I also think she makes a pretty interesting argument — that men who do this seem to revel in showing how challenging and committed they are and how physically difficult acting is for them. It is definitely arguable that some do this to make acting seem more culturally acceptable and masculine-coded.

    I don’t know if I completely agree, but I do think she’s right that at least *some* actors do this to feel more secure in acting as what they do.

  26. She should try acting by just pretending to be the character

  27. Who was that one actress that got caught shoplifting a necklace and tried to claim she was doing it for a upcoming film / method acting?

  28. Meryl Streep
    Ellen Burstyn
    Anne Bancroft
    Shelly Winters
    Faye Dunaway
    Gena Rowlands
    Joanne Woodward

    These are just some of the female actors who either used elements or were full blown method performers. Stewart makes a couple of points or observations I would agree with but not being able to come up with examples of women who method is kind of funny. Like, do you even watch movies?

  29. DeNiro said it best. (Paraphrasing) “Film acting is not acting. It is the result of a collaborative process with the Director, others. The only true acting occurs on the stage where the actor is free to interpret the words in the moment and there is no edit room.”

  31. Joan Crawford and Bette Davis went method AF for Whatever Happened to Baby Jane.

  32. I get that she’s not using the actual definition of “method acting” but whatever children today think method acting is, but just wanted to point out that two of the people most responsible for introducing and popularizing method acting in America were Stella Adler and Paula Strasberg (even if Lee took all the glory), and they taught many actresses

  33. Acting is also inherently childish. I remember hearing some joke after Gravity came out – I forget the part that made it funny, but part of it went “There’s only two people I know that spent that last 6 months straight pretending to be an Astronaut, one is George Clooney, and the other is my four year old son.”

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