Jordan
02-13-2004, 05:17 PM
Generally, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, and Dustin Hoffman are seen at three of the best actors alive. I think that there are better actors, but these three were the first big time actors to use method acting in films. Method acting is when you take a real life experiance and use that to force emotion out, such as a parent dying, or sometimes people like De Niro will take it further. He actually got a Taxi liscense so he could know what it is like to be a taxi driver in the movie Taxi Driver. He also had three proffessional boxing matches in preparation for Raging Bull, winning two losing one. Now just about every actor uses some form of method acting, witch in my opinion is mainly because of these three men. Now people before them used whats called technical acting, people like Laurence Olivier was the epitome of technical acting. He is thought of as probably the greatest stage actor ever. Technical acting is basiclly when you ingulf the character and become the character and feel their emotion instead of something from the past. Most people know about the "Is it safe" sceene from The Marathon Man, witch stars Laurence Olivier and Dustin Hoffman. Laurence Olivier plays a german Nazi, he was a dentist and would tourcher people in the concentration camps. There is a sceene when Olivier has Hoffman tied up and is touching a nerve in the mouth with an istrument, and Hoffman's character was saposed to look very tired and worn out. So he stayed up for I think it was 3 days and ran as much as he could. During shooting Hoffman looked so back Laurence Olivier leaned over during the middle of filming and said "Why don't you just act?". Thats something pretty famous among actor, im sure most of you know it anyway. But out of the three actors above I choose Robert De Niro.