Lady Gaga has become the latest star to embrace method acting, speaking with an Italian accent for nine months while filming a drama about the Gucci family.
The Oscar-winning singer bemused her co-stars on the set of Ridley Scott’s House of Gucci by remaining in character throughout, and said her refusal to break character eventually led to “psychological difficulty”.
She plays Patrizia Reggiani, who was convicted of hiring a hitman to murder her ex-husband, Maurizio Gucci, grandson of the man who founded the luxury fashion brand. During her trial, Reggiani was labelled the Black Widow by the Italian press.
House of Gucci will be released in inemas later this month. Speaking to British Vogue, Gaga said: “It is three years since I started working on it and I will be fully honest and transparent: I spoke with an accent for nine months of that.
“Off camera, I never broke. I stayed with her. It was nearly impossible for me to speak in the accent as a blonde. I instantly had to dye my hair, and I started to live in a way whereby anything that I looked at, anything that I touched, I started to take notice of where and when I could see money.”
The 35-year-old star took her method acting to such lengths that she began to lose touch with reality. She explained: “I had some psychological difficulty at one point towards the end of filming.
“I was either in my hotel room, living and speaking as Reggiani, or I was on set, living and speaking as her. I remember I went out into Italy one day with a hat on to take a walk. I hadn’t taken a walk in about two months and I panicked. I thought I was on a movie set.”
Co-stars in the film include Salma Hayek, who plays a clairvoyant convicted for her role in the murder. Hayek described Gaga’s method acting as “delicious madness”.
Gaga recalled one day on set when she refused to talk to Hayek as they waited to film a scene. “We were in between takes and Salma was like, ‘Oh, this ----ing method actor over here. You know, she’s not talking to me right now.’ Because I was doing sense memory work next to her, and she was making fun of me while I was sitting there doing it. And I didn’t even laugh… It was a wonderful set, but I’m very serious when I work.”
Discussing the film earlier this year, Hayek said of Gaga’s approach: “Her level of commitment – I’ve only seen maybe once or twice somebody commit to a character like she does.”
House of Gucci is Gaga’s first film since A Star Is Born in 2018. That performance earned her an Oscar nomination and she won the best original song award for Shallow, which featured on the soundtrack.
Reggiani was released from prison in 2014 after serving 17 years. She had ordered the hit on her husband after he left her for another woman. Gucci was gunned down on the steps of his office in Milan in 1995.
Asked by a TV reporter after her release why she had hired a hitman instead of carrying out the murder herself, Reggiani replied: “My eyesight is not so good. I didn’t want to miss.”
An appeals court in Milan ruled that, despite ordering the killing, she was entitled to receive £900,000 a year from his estate plus back payments from her time in prison, amounting to more than £16 million.
The money should help to keep her in the manner to which she was accustomed during her marriage. She turned down an offer of earlier release because it came with the requirement that she get a job, and once said: “I would rather weep in a Rolls-Royce than be happy on a bicycle.”
The full feature is in the December issue of British Vogue from Friday Nov 5
