Kristen Stewart Nails Why Method Actors Are Almost Always Men

All three of my kids are theater kids, which means I’ll be watching performances on Thursday, Sunday, Tuesday, and Wednesday over the next ten days. One of my daughters, earlier this year, gave what I thought (I am biased) was an exceptional performance as the Lion in Wizard of Oz, despite being a middle-school girl in a ridiculous costume and wig. She was terrified of being embarrassed in front of the school, but she took to heart what her theater teacher told her about leaning into the embarrassment, pushing through it, and ultimately owning it. She was so good, I thought, precisely because she pushed past that fear.

And that is what acting is so often about: standing in front of an audience, making yourself vulnerable, and risking humiliation. I cannot overstate how difficult that is for a middle-school girl in front of a pack of middle-school boys she knows are going to tease her, because that’s what middle-school boys do.

That’s what I thought about while listening to Kristen Stewart discuss method acting with the NYTimes’ David Marchese. She’s really spot-on about why you almost never hear about women who call themselves method actors.

“Performance is inherently vulnerable and therefore quite embarrassing and unmasculine,” she says in the interview. “There’s no bravado in suggesting that you’re the mouthpiece for someone else’s ideas … it’s just inherently sort of submissive.”

In other words, men fear looking unmasculine, so they dress it up in a masculine costume.

“Have you ever heard of a female actor who is method?” she asks. “Men are aggrandized for retaining self. I truly believe that, from an insider’s perspective, if you have to do 50 push-ups before your close-up, or if you refuse to say a word a certain way, or if you can’t sit down in an interview and not repossess and belittle every question — especially if asked by a woman — to you, the movie star … “

“There’s a really common act that happens before the acting happens on set. Not only does it waste time, it draws attention. It siphons. And I get it: if it makes everyone stand at attention … if you can protrude out of the vulnerability a little bit and feel like a gorilla pounding their chest before they cry on camera, it’s a little less embarrassing. And it makes it seem like a magic trick. It makes it seem so impossible - what you’re doing - that no one else could do it.”

Honestly, that’s one of the most insightful explanations I’ve ever heard for why so many men lean into method acting while so few women do. Men are afraid to expose vulnerability, to embarrass themselves, so they disguise that fear in a method meant to project toughness.