The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act – A Recommended Read for Actors
When we think of “Method acting,” images often come to mind: Robert De Niro gaining sixty pounds for Raging Bull, actors refusing to break character between takes, or the intense emotional preparation that has become both celebrated and parodied in popular culture. But as cultural historian Isaac Butler demonstrates in his landmark work, The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act, this popular understanding barely scratches the surface.
Published in 2022 by Bloomsbury Publishing, Butler’s book has been hailed as “the present and likely future standard-bearer for books on the subject” and won the 2022 National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction. It is, in every sense, an essential read for anyone who takes the craft of acting seriously.
What the Book Is About
Butler does not offer another technical manual on acting technique. Instead, he approaches the Method as if it were “a biography” — making the Method itself “the protagonist in its own story”. His ambitious narrative traces the journey of modern psychological acting from its nineteenth-century roots in Tsarist Russia to its flowering on Broadway and in Hollywood, and finally to its enduring influence on contemporary performance.
The book is structured in three large “Acts” spanning twenty-four chapters. Act One, “The Kingdom of Dreams,” transports readers to Moscow in 1898, where Konstantin Stanislavski and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko founded the Moscow Art Theatre and began their revolutionary quest to replace theatrical artifice with psychological truth. Butler shows how Stanislavski, frustrated by the predictable spectacle of the late nineteenth-century Russian stage, wanted theatre to be “a seriously-taken art… performed by professionals who were giving their all to a collective vision”.
Act Two, “Togetherness,” follows the Method’s transplantation to America through the Group Theatre, founded in 1931 by Harold Clurman, Lee Strasberg, and Cheryl Crawford. This section introduces the legendary teachers — Stella Adler, Elia Kazan, and others — whose fierce disagreements over technique (particularly Strasberg’s “affective memory” versus Adler’s emphasis on imagination) would shape the Method’s development for decades.
Act Three brings the story to Hollywood, where Method-trained actors like Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, James Dean, and Marilyn Monroe transformed screen acting forever. Butler chronicles how the Method migrated from New York stages to Los Angeles soundstages, influencing everything from A Streetcar Named Desire to Raging Bull.
Why This Book Matters
What makes Butler’s account so compelling is his argument that the Method was never “merely an acting theory” but rather “a transformative, revolutionary, modernist art movement, one of the Big Ideas of the twentieth century”. The Method, in Butler’s telling, explored fundamental questions: “what a human being is, and how a human being works”.
The book is not simply about technique. Butler places the Method within larger historical and political contexts — from the Russian Revolution to the Great Depression to the Hollywood blacklist era. He shows how acting was influenced by war, social change, and personal and aesthetic battles. The result is a sweeping cultural history that reveals how the way we act on stage and screen reflects how we understand ourselves as human beings.
Butler also brings the story to life with vivid personalities and backstage drama. The cast of characters includes John Garfield, Kim Stanley, and even the fraught relationship between Meryl Streep and Dustin Hoffman during the filming of Kramer vs. Kramer. Yet Butler never loses sight of the larger intellectual stakes. As one reviewer noted, the book is “a page-turning tale of both great ideas and fascinating characters that made it hard to put down”.
For the Practicing Actor
For actors training at Schott Acting Studio, this book offers invaluable perspective. It illuminates where our techniques come from, why different teachers emphasize different approaches, and how the craft evolved into what it is today. Butler’s central theme — the search for perezhivanie, the state of deeply “experiencing” a role — speaks directly to what every actor strives for.
As Butler himself puts it, the Method helped usher in performances where actors seem “really alive in the moment and really present” — where we watch characters think, feel, and struggle in all their complexity. That is the kind of truth we pursue in our work, and understanding its history deepens our capacity to achieve it.
Further Resources
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
www.bloomsbury.com/ca/method-9781635574784
Author: Isaac Butler
slate.com/author/isaac-butler
Butler is a cultural critic, theatre director, and co-host of Slate’s podcast “Working” about the creative process. His writing has appeared in New York magazine, Slate, The Guardian, and American Theatre.
Selected Interviews & Lectures:
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Fresh Air with Terry Gross (NPR): An in-depth conversation about the book and the history of Method acting
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CBC Radio – Ideas: “Forget the Oscars — what makes a truly great actor?” — Butler discusses how acting became a search for psychological and emotional truth
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Decoder Ring (Slate Podcast): “The Madness Behind ‘The Method'” — exploring how the Method became so well-known and widely misunderstood
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RadioWest (KUER): “How The 20th Century Learned To Act” — Butler on how the craft evolved into the remarkable skill we know today
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Booksoup: Isaac Butler in conversation with Dana Schwartz discussing The Method
Video/Lecture: NNV Zoom Lecture on The Method (recording available)
