Succession star Jeremy Strong isn’t a fan of directors calling “action!”.
Strong made the comment to his Serenity and Armageddon Time co-star Anne Hathaway during their “Actors on Actors” conversation for Variety.
He told Hathaway of his process: “In a sense, every time somebody calls action – and I don’t like it when they call ‘action’; I like it when you just take your cue – but then you blindly follow a sense of truth and really rigorously do that.”
For her part, Hathaway said she “loved” when directors called “action!”.
Strong continued: “Then you discover what it is, and it reveals itself to you. But I don’t ever know where I’m going. If you prepare enough and have internalised enough, then you just know.”
Strong is well known for his commitment to method acting. He reportedly “begged” director Aaron Sorkin to tear-gas him when filming The Trial of the Chicago 7.
Elsewhere in the interview, Hathaway recalled Strong breaking character for the first time in weeks while filming Serenity to tell her he needed to “come up for air”.
“I remember one time sidling up to you and saying, ‘Listen, I completely respect what you’re doing, but I also want to be a human. So I’m going to just be wide open, if you ever want to talk,’” Hathaway said. “And you just nodded, because you were so deep in your character.”
Method actors have been taken to task in recent months by stars like Jon Bernthal, Mads Mikkelsen and Will Poulter, all of whom have questioned the necessity of staying in character when the cameras stop rolling.
“Method acting shouldn’t be used as an excuse for inappropriate behaviour – and it definitely has,” Poulter told The Independent.
