Kristen Stewart has said that men in Hollywood are “aggrandized for retaining self” within their performances, while women are not given the same treatment.
The 35-year-old Twilight star told the New York Times that some male actors use techniques like method acting to balance the emotional side of performing.
“Performance is inherently vulnerable and therefore quite embarrassing and unmasculine,” Stewart said. “There’s no bravado in suggesting that you’re a mouthpiece for someone else’s ideas. It’s inherently submissive. Have you ever heard of a female actor that was method?”
She said that she’s noticed a “common act” among male actors when they’re getting into character, stating: “If they can protrude out of the vulnerability and feel like a gorilla pounding their chest before they cry on camera, it’s a little less embarrassing.”
“It also makes it seem like a magic trick, like it is so impossible to do what you’re doing that nobody else could do it.”
The comments occurred during a larger conversation that mentioned Marlon Brando’s famous mispronunciation of “Krypton” in 1978’s Superman. The interviewer recalled Sean Penn saying it was a way for Brando to maintain his integrity while appearing in a “sellout movie.”
“Brando sounds like a hero, doesn’t he? If a woman did that, it would be different,” she said. “If you have to do 50 push-ups before your close-up or refuse to say a word a certain way — I mean, Brando, I’m not coming for him.”
Stewart then recalled a conversation she had with another actor that reaffirmed her belief that actresses aren’t allowed to express themselves in the same way as male actors.
She explained, “I asked a fellow actor: ‘Have you ever met a female actor that was method and needed to scream and do a whole thing?’ As soon as I said, ‘male actor, female actor,’ the reaction was like, ‘Do not mention the elephant in the room.’ And he goes, ‘Oh, actresses are crazy.'”
“Then I was like: Hold on a second. You just called me crazy! Cool. So now we’re doing the typical thing where the girl’s crazy, and you didn’t even listen to anything I said?”
Stewart recently made her full-length feature directorial debut with The Chronology of Water, a film she has been trying to make for a decade. She told the Times she had to do “a lot of kicking and screaming” to get it done.
“It took a long time because it is unsavory, unpalatable, because it’s about violation and repossession — and also how fun it is to watch someone do that, because she is a force,” she explained of Imogen Poots, who stars as Lidia.
“She’s like a tsunami. And also there’s a sexuality in it that feels delicious.”
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