Backstory + Lee Strasberg above) ran New York's Actors Studio and became the most famous teacher of the Method in ‘America. Though he appeared in few films. himself, he earned an Oscar nod for playing a Jewish gangster in The Godfather Part l-but lost to his costar and former | pupil) Robert De Niro. ethod Madness A century ago, Stanislavski's guide for actors started a revolution. It still inspires. BY LISA SCHWARZBAUM MyLett + Pefle Day-Lewis, Is there a moviegoer left who doesn't know what Daniel Day-Lewis is willing to do | forthe love of acting? Profile | writers invariably marvel | that the actor learned to hold | paintbrush with his toes to Konstantin | play an artist with cerebral Stanislavski | palsy in My Left Foot, mas: Nonfiction | tered canoe making to play an adopted Indian in The Last of the Mohicans, and excelled at knife throwing to play a 19th-century New York thug in Gangs of New York. What's more, any refer: ence to his work habits is bound to mention Day-Lewis’ fabled preference for remaining, character, even off camera. The star glowered menacingly at Leo DiCaprio during Gangs lunch breaks! He remained in his wheelchair with his two perfectly good feet dangling even after My Left Foot director Jim Sheridan called Cut! He sleptina prison cell for In the Name of the Father! Divorced from an explanation of intention and practical effect, such exotic preparation is bound to sound obsessive, eccentric, even agonized. Yet the results are singular: Daniel Day-Lewis has learned how to disappear and be replaced on sereen by Gangs’ Bill the Butcher. ‘or Mohicans’ Hawkeye, or There Will Be Blood’ Daniel Plainview, the role that just earned him his second Best Actor Oscar. These are all psy- chologieally believable, identifiably realistic individuals, their characters built with the precision and calibrations of a craftsman. It's doubtful that Konstantin Stanislavski had knife-throwing prowess in mind when the Russian actor and director first worked out his groundbreaking approach to the business of acting over a century ago at the Moscow Art ‘Theatre. But Day-Lewis is just the latest, most earnest adept of Stanislavski’s philosophy, which rejected the stylized grand gestures and decla mations that were, until then, the prevailing style of Western stage performance—and created the dominant style of acting today. Stanislavski called the detailed process he invented to analyze the components of creating a character a “system,” and distilled his thinking into two dense treatises, An Actor Prepares and Building a Character. Now Jean Benedetti has supplied a fresh, clarifying translation of both books to produce the new manual, An Actor's Work, Theater students, scholars, and those who want to parse the differences between Stan. islavski’s system and the American adaptation known as Method acting will want to delve into chapter thickets concerned with muscular release, “Emotion Memory,” and the truth that “where there is no awareness of living feelings that are parallel to the character’s, there can beno talk of a genuine act of creation.” Lay readers, ‘meanwhile, may want to just dip in and out ofits wisdom about the importance of “truthful, simple physical actions” and consider that ‘without Stanislayski, there would be no Blood. ‘There would also be no Robert De Niro, fat, furious, and incendiary as Jake La Motta in Rag- ing Bull. And there would be no Stanley Kowal- ski, Terry Malloy, or Don Vito Corleone from. Marlon Brando, no Jimmy Markum in Mystic River from Sean Penn, no Maggie Fitzgerald in Million Dollar Baby from Hilary Swank, or horrifyingly gaunt insomniac Trevor Reznik in The Machinist from Christian Bale. Never mind Dustin Hoffman's exertions as a New York run- ner terrorized in a dentist's chair by a Nazi war criminal in Marathon Man—the real loss would be Hoffman’s exertions in Tootsie, playing both soap opera actress Dorothy Michaels as well as pain-in-the-butt unemployed actor Michael Dorsey, a purist so committed to the Method that he refuses to sit when cast asa tomato because, he says, “it wasn't logical.” “The life of the character [an actor] is portray- ing, fashioned out of material drawn from his Emotion Memory, is often dearer to him than his, own everyday life,” wrote Stanislavski, urging his students to draw on personal memories of feelings to stay in touch with what's real. The advice sounds so Russian—and so...American. ACTING UP Hoffman's costar in Marathon Man, Laurence “Without Olivier, was famously dismissive of the Method, : witha particulary ightveentedtasts forthe _Russanactor hetey Yankintarior peycloaisal approcchto. STA CITECUOT character rather than the tidier, sturdier, exterior Konstantin oriented British way. The fact that the British- _ Stanislavski, born, Irish-identified Day-Lewis immerses there wouldbe himself so ardently in a system as Russian—and as American—as Stanislavski’s revolutionary, emotionally naked, physically fearless approach to creating realistic characters is a measure of the Oscar winner’s own force of character, true. But it’s also a measure of the elegance of Konstantin Stanislavski’s system, the marvel of the Method. ASTORM: A HISTORY no Blood.” Ever since the Method taught them to “become” their roles, actors have been piling on pounds, spending months on research, and staying in character 24/7—allfor their art. Here's a sampling of highs and lows through the years. Gregory Kirschling Ae O- O- cms og 1979 1980 wae marion ROBERT peril sranoo f _DENIRO He eared eed: O- He artved to-box, then oO icon mumbled ‘1981 on set goss | grned £5 2001 pee ie ‘verweght, | pounds to play RENEE an Oscar as NEWMAN eae eae ZELLWEGER: eae decor Foncis | “gone to seed aoe dockworker. ‘The student of f FOU Coppola he NICOLAS gut Lao Stas CAGE She packed berg learned on 20 pounds to od, then took ply the Bt eR ip racecar % No-actorhas | singleton ving 4 gone sofar | and snagged for 960 . forso te ‘an Oscar Winning He ate alive ed i ceockroach sae oO | on soreen. O 0 2007 DANIEL DAY-LEWIS After confining himself to awiheelchair for 1980's My Left Foot, he earned bis seeend Oscar channeling acrazed