Robert De Niro, the final word of method acting!

What is the first name/thing that comes to your mind when you hear the phrase ‘method acting’?

A big majority of the answers would be ‘Robert De Niro’. The most talented actor has won 2 Academy Awards — the Best Supporting Actor in 1975 for The Godfather Part II and Best Actor in 1981 for Raging Bull, and scores of other awards and accolades in his most illustrious career spanning more than 50 years.

Method acting is a technique or type of acting in which an actor aspires to encourage sincere and emotionally expressive performances by fully inhabiting the role of the character. These techniques were built on Stanislavski’s system, developed by the Russian actor and director Konstantin Stanislavski. It was further developed by Lee Strasberg, Stella Adler and Sanford Meisner, starting from the days when they were working together at the Group Theatre in New York. These three are usually associated with ‘having set the standards of its success’.

In Strasberg’s approach, actors make use of experiences from their own lives to bring them closer to the experience of their characters. This technique, which Stanislavski came to call emotion memory, involves the recall of sensations involved in experiences that made a significant emotional impact on the actor. Without faking or forcing, actors allow those sensations to…