“Have you ever heard of a female actor that was method?” This was the question Kristen Stewart posed in a New York Times interview a few months ago, and it has been circulating online ever since, sparking debate about what she meant and the gendered implications it raises about acting.
The comment came in a December interview, where Stewart, who has just made her directorial debut with The Chronology of Water, discussed her new film, her experience in the industry, and her thoughts on acting more broadly. The interviewer, David Marchese, brought up Marlon Brando’s intentional mispronunciation of “Krypton” in the 1978 Superman, a choice framed as Brando’s way of retaining “some part of himself, even though he was doing a sellout movie.” When Marchese asked Stewart if she had ever done anything similar, she pivoted into something sharper: that performance is inherently vulnerable, and “therefore quite embarrassing and unmasculine.” There is, she explained, “no bravado in suggesting that you’re a mouthpiece for someone else’s ideas. It’s inherently submissive.” Hence the question.
Stewart goes on to note that male actors are celebrated for retaining their sense of self, but if a woman did the same, it would be received very differently.
Bold and blunt as they are, Kristen Stewart’s comments have sent ripples through the media. That boldness is precisely what has provoked such a strong reaction, particularly among women who have never heard it framed this way before. The paradox Stewart identifies is striking. Method acting – the technique that supposedly requires an actor to surrender themselves entirely to a character – is consistently reframed by its famous male practitioners as a display of dominance and ego. The actor who refuses to break character, insisting everyone on set use his character’s name, or undergoes intense physical transformation, is not giving himself over to the role: he is asserting control over it. As Stewart points out, when women bring that same intensity to their work, they are not celebrated as geniuses but instead written off as difficult, unstable, or “crazy.”
I find this observation fascinating, thought-provoking, and especially relevant to recent conversations in pop culture and film, most notably around Timothée Chalamet’s press tour for Marty Supreme and the pushback his approach has received.
Chalamet, who recently starred in Josh Safdie’s “ping pong nerve-jangler” Marty Supreme, has been at the center of conversations recently for numerous reasons. Chalamet revealed that he had been transforming into “Marty” for the last seven years, learning how to play ping pong in Covid and on the sets of various films he was working on at the time–such as The French Dispatch and Dune. Chalamet also admitted to deliberately blinding himself with strong contact lenses that would then blur his vision and leave him feeling dizzy, forcing him to wear Marty’s prescription glasses. If that ain’t method, I don’t know what is. What has stuck out most to people, however, is not Chalamet’s behavior during filming but rather how it has translated into the film’s press tour and Chalamet’s attitudes in interviews and speeches.
Eleven months before Marty Supreme was released, Chalamet won the SAG award for Male Actor in a Leading Role for his performance in the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown. When accepting the award, Chalamet gave one of his most famous speeches to date, shouting out other “greats” such as Marlon Brando (ironic, right?), Viola Davis, and Michael Jordan. Chalamet’s claims that he is “in pursuit of greatness” received a mixed response, with some people admiring the actor’s drive and ambition, and others questioning if it was a harmful display of “manosphere-enabled confidence.” Chalamet later revealed that while giving this speech, he was in the “Marty Mauser mindset.”
This mindset has been clearly reflected in the film’s marketing method. When interviewed, Chalamet has consistently presented himself as extremely confident; in one interview, he even explained that this was his best work yet and a culmination of the past decade of work, where he has been “handing in committed, top of the line performances.” Hearing Chalamet talk about himself in this incredibly confident, near-narcissistic way, some have argued, has been jarring for fans who previously appreciated Chalamet’s slightly awkward, endearing, and humble personality. Some TikTokers have even joked that it’s as if he lost the French, romantic “é” at the end of his name.
Despite all the noise, Timothee Chalamet did not win Best Actor at the Oscars. The elaborate stunts, money spent out of pocket, months of relentless campaigning – none of it was enough. For a press tour that had been framed so definitively around the pursuit of greatness, Chalamet’s loss felt notable. Whether that outcome was a relief or a disappointment likely depended on how you had received the tour in the first place (personally, I was ecstatic that Michael B Jordan won) but either way, it raised an uncomfortable question about the whole exercise: if the goal, underneath all the artistry talk, was ultimately the Oscar, then what did all of that ambition actually amount to?
Chalamet’s method acting, method marketing, and his intensity and refusal to be modest about his talent are, then, an almost perfect case study for Stewart’s argument. These things were debated, dissected, and ultimately absorbed into his image as a serious, dedicated artist. He cited Brando and Daniel Day-Lewis by name. He called his own performance “top-level.” He spent six figures of his own money on an SNL performance. And yet, the conversation around him remained one of genius and ambition. Stewart’s question hangs over all of it: would a young woman have been given the same grace? I find it very hard to imagine a 29-year-old actress publicly declaring her own work “top-level sh*t”, staging elaborate PR stunts in the name of artistic expression, and being met with think-pieces about her expanding artistry rather than her ego. The word that would most likely follow her everywhere is the one Stewart’s male colleague reached for: crazy.