30 Famous Actors Who Might Have Taken Things Too Far For A Role

Heath Ledger is often mentioned as the best actor to portray the biggest enemy of Batman, The Joker. Maybe it was because he used method acting and let the character overrun him. Heath Ledger would practice method acting regularly and to turn into The Joker he locked himself away for weeks to catch the insanity of the character.

He even asked his co-star Christian Bale to actually hit him during the interrogation scene. Christian remembers, "He was slamming himself around, and there were tiled walls inside of that set which were cracked and dented from him hurling himself into them. His commitment was total."

Jamie Foxx started out as a comedian performing in clubs but quickly rose to fame as an awarded actor. He won his Oscar for Best Actor in 2005 for portraying the rhythm and blues musician Ray Charles in the 2004 movie Ray.
 
To prepare for this role, the actor lost 30 pounds (13 kilograms) to have the slender physique the musician had. What is more, Ray Charles was blind, so the film director Taylor Hackford thought that it would be a good idea to glue Jamie Foxx's eyes shut for the whole 14 hours they were filming in a day. The actor agreed and had to wear prosthetic eyelids that were modeled from Charles' own eyelids.
 
The actor reported that it was quite claustrophobic and he felt as if he was a prisoner in his own isolated world, but it made him portray the musician so brilliantly, he received the most prestigious award in the acting industry.

Christian Bale is known for his crazy body transformations. The most famous case is when he lost 55 pounds (25 kilograms) in four months to play Trevor Reznik, who became emaciated due to his insomnia, in the 2004 movie The Machinist.
 
To achieve the skeleton-like stature of a sick person, Christian Bale was just smoking cigarettes and drinking whiskey. Later he 'enriched' his diet with black coffee, an apple and a tin of tuna every day.
 
When the actor reached 99 pounds (45 kilograms), the film producers managed to convince him to stop for health reasons. Considering the man's height is 6 feet (187 centimetres), he was severely underweight and after years of gaining and losing weight as well as training for different roles, Christian Bale realized that at some point he had to stop as it was not beneficial to his health.

Anne Hathaway was casted for the role of Fantine in the 2012 movie Les Misérables based on the novel of the same name by Victor Hugo. The actress was playing a mother living on the street who had to sell her hair, teeth, and eventually her body to support her daughter Cosette.
 
Anne Hathaway made some sacrifices of her own to be a convincing character. She said, "I had to be obsessive about it — the idea was to look near death. Looking back on the whole experience — and I don't judge it in any way — it was definitely a little nuts. It was definitely a break with reality, but I think that's who [my character] Fantine is anyway."
 
She lost 25 pounds (11 kilograms) in two weeks by eating only dried oatmeal paste. Also, she didn't settle for a wig and cut her hair off. The makeup artist and the director tried to talk her out of it but the actress thought it would help her comprehend the mother's state better. Well, she absolutely did as she was awarded an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.

In 1998 Johnny Depp got the role of Raoul Duke in the movie Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas. The character Raoul Duke was based on a novel by Hunter S. Thompson with the same name and in the movie, he and his friend Dr. Gonzo go on an adventure through Las Vegas as they explore it under the influence of psychoactive substances.
 
The actor and the writer got along really well, so Johnny Depp wanted to do his character who was loosely based on the writer justice. Johnny Depp moved into the basement of Thompson's Aspen house for several months. The writer also let his friend pick some clothes from his wardrobe for shooting.
 
Johnny Depp spent so much time with his character and got so into it that many of the little tics that the actor adopted stuck with him even in real life and can be noticed in later movies.

The actor who played the musician Wladyslaw Szpilman in the 2002 movie The Pianist was Adrien Brody. The movie tells a story of a Polish-Jewish pianist who was a Holocaust survivor and the actor was waiting for such a serious role to fall in his lap.
 
At the same time, he felt that he had a very responsible job to do and wanted to do it justice. To prepare for the role, the actor lost 30 pounds (13.6 kilograms) because he believed that "you can't act emaciated, you have to become emaciated." He also moved out from his apartment and gave up his car, he disconnected from the world by not using a cell phone. He went as far as breaking up with his then-girlfriend and learned how to play Chopin on the piano.
 
Adrien Brody won an Oscar for Best Actor at only 29 years old. But he confessed that the character didn't let him go even after the shooting was done, "I was depressed for a year after 'The Pianist,'" he said. "And I don't suffer from that, generally. It wasn't just a depression; it was a mourning. I was very disturbed by what I embraced [in making that film], and of the awareness that it opened up in me."

The movie Taxi Driver (1976), which starred Robert De Niro, shows a 26-year-old Vietnam war veteran trying to deal with his post-traumatic stress disorder living alone in New York and earning his living as a taxi driver.
 
Robert De Niro is known for dedicating himself to his characters. And for this particular role, he decided to try out the profession of a taxi driver for himself and he got a real cab driver's license. He worked at a cab firm in New York for a month before the filming started. The actor worked 12-hour shifts and according to some people, he didn't completely stop and would go to the streets on breaks in between filming.

Michael B. Jordan was the main villain in the Black Panther (2018) movie. He portrayed Killmonger, a man who seeks revenge for his parents who were killed when he was young. Because of that, he leaves Wakanda and grows up outside his native country to later return and bring justice to his parents.
 
When the actor found out the story of his character, he thought Killmonger must have felt very lonely having to live a life holding a secret that he originated from a country no one knew existed. Michael B. Jordan decided he had to be by himself to understand that feeling. He completely isolated himself from people, but that actually took a toll on his mental health and it was hard to get back to himself after the filming finished and he needed to see a therapist to help him out.

Daniel Day-Lewis is the star of the 1989 biographical comedy-drama My Left Foot and embodied the main character, Christy Brown, who was an Irish writer with cerebral palsy who could use only his left foot so he had to teach himself to write and draw with it.
 
To make the portrayal more convincing, the actor went into character as soon as he reached the shooting set. He asked to be wheeled around the set in his wheelchair, and he wanted to be spoonfed as well as lifted by the staff members. This dedication required some sacrifices: Daniel Day-Lewis damaged two ribs during filming from hunching in his wheelchair for the long weeks that the shooting continued. The actor also learnt to paint using a knife held between his toes. These efforts really paid off as he won an Oscar for Best Actor.