As a different topic, I just wanted to throw out my two favorite method acting examples:
Learning about Cuba, having some food
Sean Penn supposedly never left character the entire time:
Daniel Day Lewis
"Daniel Day-Lewis, five-time Oscar nominee, is famous for the extreme measures he takes in preparing for film roles. We see the green shoots of his method in his first on-screen experience - an uncredited part in John Schlesinger's Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971) - where he played a young vandal scratching a car with a broken milk bottle. 'I was recruited along with the other hooligans in my neighborhood', he said, already shaky on the lines between on and off-screen characters."
The Last of the Mohicans
Appearing as Hawkeye in The Last of the Mohicans, Michael Mann's 1992 epic, Day-Lewis learned to track and skin animals, build canoes, fight with tomahawks and fire and reload a 12-pound flintlock on the run. This has become almost standard practice for today's well-prepared action hero, though unusually Day-Lewis insisted on carrying his gun everywhere, including to lunch with his family on Christmas day. When Day-Lewis finished filming, he suffered from hallucinations and claustrophobia; 'I've no idea how not to be Hawkeye', he told Mann.
Learning about Cuba, having some food
Sean Penn supposedly never left character the entire time:
Daniel Day Lewis
"Daniel Day-Lewis, five-time Oscar nominee, is famous for the extreme measures he takes in preparing for film roles. We see the green shoots of his method in his first on-screen experience - an uncredited part in John Schlesinger's Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971) - where he played a young vandal scratching a car with a broken milk bottle. 'I was recruited along with the other hooligans in my neighborhood', he said, already shaky on the lines between on and off-screen characters."
The Last of the Mohicans
Appearing as Hawkeye in The Last of the Mohicans, Michael Mann's 1992 epic, Day-Lewis learned to track and skin animals, build canoes, fight with tomahawks and fire and reload a 12-pound flintlock on the run. This has become almost standard practice for today's well-prepared action hero, though unusually Day-Lewis insisted on carrying his gun everywhere, including to lunch with his family on Christmas day. When Day-Lewis finished filming, he suffered from hallucinations and claustrophobia; 'I've no idea how not to be Hawkeye', he told Mann.