The stories of Daniel Day-Lewis’s method acting are legion, from sending Sally Field text messages in character as Abraham Lincoln to building his character’s house himself using 17th-century tools for The Crucible. As I’ve often written, method acting, as practiced by many of today’s most important thespians, is the art of tricking yourself into believing things you know aren’t true in order to tell the truth when you’re lying. It’s really quite simple, when you think about it. And as I learned recently, Daniel Day-Lewis and Ashton Kutcher aren’t the only committed thespians out there.

If you don’t know who Ben Mendelsohn (above) is now, I promise you will soon. With memorable turns in Animal Kingdom and Killing Them Softly, and bit parts in bigger projects like The Dark Knight Rises already under his belt, the Aussie has a greasy charm that’s all but guaranteed to lubricate his awards chances in the next few years (bet on it, I’m serious). He’s got another big supporting role coming up opposite Ryan Gosling (pictured, right) and Bradley Cooper in The Place Beyond the Pines, from Blue Valentine director Derek Cianfrance, which opens in a few markets this weekend. I recently had the chance to sit down with Derek Cianfrance, and from the sounds of it, Mendelsohn behind the scenes is even more entertaining than Mendelsohn on screen.

FILMDRUNK: I was wondering about [how you cast] Ben Mendelsohn. Had you seen him in something before?

CIANFRANCE: I saw him in Animal Kingdom, and I wanted to meet with him. And he came to an audition, and he looked like a wreck. He was wearing a bracelet on his arm, and I couldn’t tell if it was from a party, like one of those party bracelets, or if it was from the hospital. He sat there at the table with me and he said, “Oh, mate, don’t make me read, don’t make me audition. If you make me audition it’s going to ruin the whole thing.” He says, “If you cast me in this I’ll carry the spear for you.” I said, “Ok, you’ve got it.” The role of Robin in the script is a little older than Ben. Robin in the script is supposed to have dentures. No teeth. In that first meeting, within 15 minutes of meeting Ben, after he told me he’d carry a spear for me, I told him he could do the movie.

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These days, Brad Cooper is a world-famous, preposterously handsome actor nominated for best actor at this Sunday’s Oscars for his work running around in a garbage bag in Silver Linings Playbook. But back in 1999, he was just a fresh-faced, preposterously handsome, 24-year-old with a Hugh Grant haircut studying at the actor’s studio. Sean Penn was in the studio, and young Mr. Cooper even got to ask him a question. A very actor-y question:

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On Friday, we got to see the first clip from jOBS, starring Josh Gad as Steve Wozniak and Ashton Kutcher as Kelso Jobs, the team who founded Apple Computers in Eric Foreman’s Wisconsin basement. The clip had the town all a-buzz, with people who saw it raving, “We never had such interaction and roles” and “Our relationship was so different than what was portrayed.”

Okay, so that was just what Steve Wozniak said about it. Nonetheless, “jOBS” is probably going to be super good, because, Ashton Kutcher has been method acting so hard that he hurt himself, as he told USA Today recently.

Kutcher says that he started a fruit-only diet to prepare to play the Apple co-founder for the biopic Jobs, which premiered Friday night at the Sundance Film Festival.
The diet, which the film claims Jobs adhered to, ended up sending Kutcher to the hospital with pancreas problems.
“First of all, the fruitarian diet can lead to like severe issues,” Kutcher said after the film’s screening. “I went to the hospital like two days before we started shooting the movie. I was like doubled over in pain.
“My pancreas levels were completely out of whack,” Kutcher added. “It was really terrifying … considering everything.”
Jobs died of pancreatic cancer on Oct. 5, 2011.

If Ashton Kutcher isn’t a total idiot, the guy who transcribed that quote sure wants us to think he is. “Bro, my heart stuff was like, all like messed up!” “Your heart stuff? Wait, you mean your blood?”

This just goes to show you once again, method acting can be dangerous for those who only dabble. Remember when Jared Leto almost ruined his kidneys gaining 60 pounds to play Mark David Chapman? It’s not safe. You could hurt yourself and others. Leave the method acting to the pros, like Daniel Day-Lewis. Daniel Day-Lewis would’ve given himself pancreatic cancer to play Steve Jobs and cured it by playing an oncologist. A true method actor knows that method acting is about tricking yourself into believing things you know aren’t true in order to tell the truth when you’re lying.

Daniel Day-Lewis did his ridiculous method acting thing in Lincoln, and it’s hard to imagine the movie without him, but did you know that he initially rejected the role? At the New York Film Critics Circle Awards (which, additional trivia, Armond White is a three-time former chairman of), Spielberg, presenting Day-Lewis’s best actor award, read the Dear Steve letter Day-Lewis sent him. That’s right, a letter. Like, through the mail, with stamps and ink and everything, just like in olden times.

Dear Steven,

It was a real pleasure just to sit and talk with you. I listened very carefully to what you had to say about this compelling history, and I’ve since read the script and found it in all the detail in which it describe these monumental events and in the compassionate portraits of all the principal characters, both powerful and moving. I can’t account for how at any given moment I feel the need to explore life as opposed to another, but I do know that I can only do this work if I feel almost as if there is no choice; that a subject coincides inexplicably with a very personal need and a very specific moment in time. In this case, as fascinated as I was by Abe, it was the fascination of a grateful spectator who longed to see a story told, rather than that of a participant. That’s how I feel now in spite of myself, and though I can’t be sure that this won’t change, I couldn’t dream of encouraging you to keep it open on a mere possibility. I do hope this makes sense Steven, I’m glad you’re making the film, I wish you the strength for it, and I send both my very best wishes and my sincere gratitude to you for having considered me. [THR]

Typical Daniel Day. “There is no choice. ‘Acting?’ Nay, for that you must call an actor. I merely choose to live my life a certain way, and if that manner of living happens to coincide with a story in a script, I consent to being filmed for a movIe. For one cannot ‘act,’ only live. I would never lie to my audience.”

Spielberg later had Tony Kushner re-write the script, Day-Lewis accepted, and the rest is history. Another piece of trivia, Daniel Day-Lewis actually acquired the “Day” in his surname after marrying former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day-O’Connor while preparing for a role as a judge. Maybe.

A while back we brought you the first pictures of Jared Leto playing an HIV-positive transvestite on the set of Dallas Buyer’s Club. After he ruined his kidneys gaining weight for that Mark David Chapman movie almost no one saw and the ones that did hated a few years back, I guess he figured he’d give this whole method acting thing another go. And now here he is posing for photographer to the stars.

Things required to do Terry Richardson’s job:

• A camera

• A klieg light

• A prisony-looking rape wall

• Largely inexplicable fame

Nothing against the guy, he’s obviously living the life, I just don’t get it. Did he get famous for other kinds of pictures before he started taking harshly-lit photographs of people standing in front of brick walls? I know I’m in front of a computer right now, but I refuse to look up this fact.

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