Method Directing – What is It and How to Use It?

MZed Education

by Mascha DeikovaApril 30^th, 2025

There are endless ways to direct a film. Some great directors can imagine every single shot before they even find suitable locations. Others like to improvise on set. There are those who understand camera language and those who let the DP figure it out while they give their full attention to the actors. What all good directors have in common, though, is their ability to create an atmosphere in which real, authentic, and emotional moments can unfold. Method directing is a specific technique to achieve exactly that. Never heard of it? No worries. In this article, we go through different tools and examples of how they actually work.

As you might have guessed, the term “method directing” comes from the concept of “method acting.” So, let’s start by defining the latter. Although they do not use the same approach, they indeed have a lot in common.

What is method acting?

Method acting is a technique based on the so-called “System” developed by Soviet actor and director Konstantin Stanislavski. He believed that actors needed to go beyond imitation and try to experience the same things their characters were experiencing. Often, it meant that actors would draw on their own emotions and real-life experience to deliver a more authentic performance.

Different schools further developed the Method and its variations. For instance, you will often stumble upon the name of another theatre practitioner, Lee Strasberg (who was even called “the father of method acting”), and his techniques, which are based on psychological aspects. We won’t dive too deep into this topic because it’s worth a separate article, yet it’s important to understand that method acting is more than one particular tool. It’s a multi-dimensional system with a rich history.

Here, though, we will narrow it down to “the art of experiencing,” in which actors fully inhabit their roles. That often involves staying “in character” even off-camera and between shooting days to maintain realism. Have you heard how Heath Ledger isolated himself for weeks in a hotel room to get to the mindset of the “Joker” for Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight?” He wrote a diary in character and experimented with different voices, staring at the wall, laughing to himself, and gradually getting this crazy embodiment to a point where all the boundaries between him and the Joker blur. That’s also a form of method acting, for example.

Method directing and its general approach

While “method directing” isn’t a widely formalized or universally recognized term, it does exist informally and refers to a directing approach that aligns with or supports method-acting principles.

Generally speaking, it includes various techniques to create an environment on set in which actors can fully immerse and thrive in their characters. The goal is to get the most authentic performance possible. Some of these techniques use psychological tricks, others can be based on physiological exercises. And boy, can those be manipulative and ethically questionable at times! We’ll take a look at some examples from actual films below, but please keep in mind that these tools should always be used with caution. It’s important to make sure your actors can handle them. In some cases, it’s even imperative to discuss the planned approach beforehand and get full consent.

Physical guidance

Physical transformations have long been part of filmmaking. We all can think of an unhealthy behind-the-scenes story that requires a drastic change in the lead actor’s weight, for example. Robert De Niro gained over 60 pounds for “Raging Bull” to portray Jake LaMotta in his later years. Cillian Murphy reportedly lost a lot of weight to achieve Oppenheimer’s physically emaciated appearance and stayed on a strict diet during the shoot, which was oh-so-close to his scientist character, who rarely ate.

However, the physical guidance from the directorial side can go even further. Let’s take “The Revenant,” for instance, which gave Leonardo DiCaprio his first Oscar. If you watched any Q&As on this film, then you know both the crew and the cast tend to call this project “an adventure,” which they knew they had signed up for. The survival thriller was shot in actual locations, with freezing temperatures, crazy weather conditions, and extremely intense shooting days. Enduring real physical hardship helped DiCaprio to create a deeply visceral experience that matched the film’s brutal tone. As the director Alejandro González Iñárritu explains in one interview, he doesn’t say that his process was good or the only way, but for him, “The Revenant” had to be a journey, and not a tourist trip with GPS, where everything was planned and on time:

The rhetoric of the creative process in depicting a man in survival model. I was there with a character that was trying to survive. I knew that experience would have to be not an intellectual one.

A quote from the interview with “Deadline” magazine

Could they organize this shoot more simply, or at least in gentler filming conditions? Sure. Would it transfer the physical experience to the viewer in the same way? I don’t think so. Not to mention that Leonardo DiCaprio ate the raw bison liver during the scene instead of a prop made of gelatin. As he says himself, his genuine reaction is on the screen:

Getting a real emotional response

Getting your actors into physically hard conditions is one thing. Playing with their heads is a different story. In “The Shining,” Stanley Kubrick famously (and rather controversially) pushed his actress Shelley Duvall to extreme emotional stress to capture real fear and anxiety on screen. In my opinion, this is more of an ethically debated example of method directing, and not something I would suggest to anyone.

At the same time, there are small psychological tricks that can help you get an authentic emotion or reaction in a performance. A brilliant example of this kind of cinematic trickery is the iconic fall of Hans Gruber (portrayed by Alan Rickman) in “Die Hard.” Let’s first rewatch the scene together:

The shot where we see Hans Gruber finally fall from Nakatomi Plaza is a controlled stunt. The director John McTiernan and the stunt team told Alan Rickman they’d drop him on the count of three. Instead, they dropped him on one. So, the shock we see on the actor’s face is real: he wasn’t expecting this at all. As a result, the moment is full of authentic intensity. Yes, obviously, you can try such a trick only for one take, but this one take will most likely turn out golden.

Intentional misguiding of your actors

Talking about misguiding your actors on purpose – that’s another art of method directing, which is sometimes very powerful (when it fits the story, of course). Do you remember the original “Blade Runner,” with its famous clash between the director Ridley Scott and the lead Harrison Ford about whether or not police officer Rick Deckard was a replicant? Ford insisted that Deckard was human and portrayed him that way. Scott, on the contrary, cut different versions of the film (including his 2007 final cut), and with each, added more clues that Deckard was a replicant. The ongoing argument created a certain ambiguity and tension in the performance, which suited the film’s theme of identity and also transferred the uncertainty to the viewers (who, in turn, have continued the discussion to this day).

This is an interesting example to learn from. If you want your character to truly believe in something, you can withhold information from the actor or present them with an idea that is conflicting with the actual film’s story. Or, conversely, give them important facts no one else knows yet (for instance, if you are filming a series, before the scripts for the next episodes are available).

A method directing technique for co-directors

This kind of misdirection isn’t exactly method directing in the traditional sense, but it’s definitely a psychological tool. And as the term doesn’t exist officially, I’ll take the liberty to include some techniques that I find fit.

For example, if you have co-directors on the project, there is a trick for you to try out in dialogue scenes. (I’ve used it more than once in my own films, and the results were amazing.) It goes like this: Each director takes one actor aside and gives them particular instructions that the other won’t know. Those instructions should be carefully chosen beforehand and make sense for the scene.

For example:

• One is impatient and wants the answer, the other is meddlesome and takes their time.
• One wants to come closer, the other wants to keep their physical distance.
• One is directed to break from the script, while the other should keep to their lines.
• When one hears a certain dialogue line, one should abruptly stop any activity that one is doing; the other doesn’t know about that.
• One has secret intentions that are not visible in the script, while the other has a contradictory objective

and the list goes on.

By planting these instructions into actors’ heads, you set them and their partners up for genuine actions and reactions, which brings a truly natural flow to the scene.

Naturalistic approach in directing

Recently, I watched an impressive drama, “Harvest,” at a film festival. Directed by Athina Rachel Tsangari, the story is set in England during the Middle Ages. It follows a small remote village that relies on livestock and farming, and how its way of life changes during a time of economic turmoil and after another lord claims the land.

During the Q&A, Athina confirmed that the lead, Caleb Landry Jones, is a method actor: he dived into the character weeks before the shoot. Yet she also shared many behind-the-scenes stories, which suggest that the whole project fits the description of method directing. Principal photography took place in a small village in Scotland. The only way to get there was on a tiny local train, which all cast and crew members had to take. They lived in the village for months during the shoot. Together, they sowed the fields for the scenes and harvested them later. For each scene, they tried to always have a 360-degree shooting angle for the action to evolve naturally. That included heavily relying on natural lighting, mic-ing everyone, and placing additional mics around the grass.

Such an approach is also about creating an environment in which it is easier to live the story authentically, for real. And by the way, I strongly recommend you watch the film once it has a theatrical release.

The ethical aspect of method directing

But, method directing can also cross boundaries and quickly enter a troubling zone. Have you heard of “DAU”? This project started as a biopic about a Soviet physicist, Lev Landau, but under the direction of Ilya Khrzhanovsky, it exploded into something surreal. Instead of making just a movie, Khrzhanovsky created a massive closed-off set called “The Institute,” where actors (and not only professional ones) lived in character for years. Crazy, right? Of course, this is a clear exaggeration of the concept of method directing. Yet it raises an important question: what is ethical and what is not? We started with that thought, and I want to end with it as well. It is imperative to always remember it whenever you choose to apply one of these techniques in your film. So, please, make sure you do.

What do you think about method directing and the techniques we touched on? Which tools or tricks would you add to this list? Where lies the ethical line, in your opinion? What is okay, and what is not? Let’s talk further in the comments section below.

Feature image source: film stills from “The Revenant” by Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2016; “Harvest” by Athina Rachel Tsangari, 2024; and “Die Hard” by John McTiernan, 1988.

Full disclosure: MZed is owned by CineD.