10 Actors Who Fiercely Committed Themselves To Their Roles

Like baking or driving, acting is a skill that can be learned. You can go to acting school and learn how to move correctly, make your face look right, speak properly, and internalize your character.

It's something anyone can do a bit of and anyone can learn. However, acting that can truly move someone or genuinely make someone feel the emotions the character has experienced is pure talent and a ton of dedication to the craft.

It's not something everyone can do, and it's not something everyone chooses to do because that kind of dedication just isn't easy. You'd not only have to be dedicated to the physical transformation for the role, but you'd also have to hone your mind and even your behaviors.

This kind of dedication is what separates the truly great actors from those who are merely mediocre and are only in it for fame and money. These great actors truly see their craft as an art form that they're willing to work on to the best of their ability.

From the clothes of their characters to how they perceive the world, these actors embody their character's minds and souls. Here are some examples of actors who fiercely dedicated themselves to a role.

1. Daniel Day-Lewis

The three-time Oscar winner was notoriously picky about which roles to accept, not because he had some kind of prediction about which movies were going to be a hit, but because whatever he did take on was going to take over his life for as long as it took.

For My Left Foot, which earned him his first Best Actor Oscar, he mastered the use of the toes on his titular extremity, and he also remained in his character's wheelchair throughout the entire duration of the shoot. He even had crew members spoon-feed him.

For his role as average Joe turned activist Gerry Conlon, who was wrongfully convicted of being involved in an IRA bombing in the film The Name of the Father, he suffered a broken nose and a back injury while training to box.

While making Gangs of New York, he took butchering lessons and even caught pneumonia after forgoing insulated winter clothes because his character, Bill "The Butcher," would have had access to thick coats.

Then, when he took on the main role in Lincoln, which he described as "a very, very bad idea," he spent about a year reading everything he could about the former U.S. president. This included biographies and even Lincoln's own writings.

He also studied pictures to nail his expressions, and when filming began, he spoke in Lincoln's reedy Kentucky-by-way-of-Illinois manner throughout. His co-star Jared Harris was also asked to stay in character so that his British accent wouldn't serve as a distraction.

"Without sounding unhinged, I know I'm not Abraham Lincoln," Day-Lewis told the Times. "I'm aware of that. But the truth is the entire game is about creating an illusion, and for whatever reason, and mad as it may sound, some part of me can allow myself to believe for a period of time without questioning, and that's the trick."

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2. Jeremy Strong

Emmy winner Strong may be applauded for his performance as Kendall Roy on the TV series Succession, but his approach to the role really isn't for everybody. Even his co-star Brian Cox, who plays the patriarch of the family, Logan Roy, thinks it would do Strong good to lighten up a bit.

However, Strong truly takes communicating Kendall's plight and responsibility to the audience seriously.

Kieran Culkin, who plays the youngest sibling, Roman Roy, said that Strong "puts himself in a bubble" on set and keeps to himself, much like his character in season three. Strong apparently also doesn't like rehearsing because he said, "I want every scene to feel like I'm encountering a bear in the woods."

Peter Kramer/HBO

3. Jack Nicholson

Looking at the three-time Oscar winner go to work, you'd think that he's the kind of actor who just slips into a role without a care in the world, but apparently, that's not the truth.

In 1986, a New York Times feature described the actor as the ultimate preparer. Before playing the devilish rogue in The Witches of Eastwick, he took violin lessons and conducted scholarly research on Beelzebub, hell, and evil.

Nicholson also revealed that in Red, in the scene where he hands Diane Keaton an envelope, inside was a real intimate poem he'd written for the actress. It's "the kind of thing no one else sees, but you know it's there," he said.

For The Shining, when his character, the unraveling writer Jack Torrance, snaps at his wife Wendy to not bother him while he's working, he came up with his lines.

"That scene at the typewriter—that's what I was like when I got my divorce," he told the Times. "I was under the pressure of being a family man with a daughter, and one day I accepted a job to act in a movie during the daytime while I was writing a movie at night. I was back in my little corner, and my beloved wife, Sandra, walked in on what was, unbeknownst to her, this maniac. I told [director Stanley Kubrick] about it, and we wrote it into the scene. I remember being at my desk and telling her [in his scary voice], 'Even if you don't hear me typing, it doesn't mean I'm not writing. This is writing'...I remember that total animus. Well, I got a divorce."

Warner Bros.

4. Lady Gaga

It would have been easy for Lady Gaga to meet the real-life version of the character she plays in House of Gucci, but she refused.

"I only felt that I could truly do this story justice if I approached it with the eye of a curious woman who was interested in possessing a journalistic spirit so that I could read between the lines of what was happening in the film's scenes," Lady Gaga told the Los Angeles Times. "Meaning that nobody was going to tell me who Patrizia Gucci was. Not even Patrizia Gucci."

Instead, she spent three years deep-diving into Patrizia's story and the murder of her ex-husband, which had the fashionista sent to prison for having him killed. Gaga also spent roughly a year and a half living with the fashionista inside her head.

She also spoke with a thick Italian accent for at least nine months straight.

"I never broke. I stayed with her," the SAG Award nominee said. And she admitted that it was rough.

In a Zoom chat for The Envelope, she said, "I'm always thinking when the movie's over and I'm a bag of bones going home, that there has to be this other way for me to tell stories without abandoning myself. I still feel like I have a lot to learn in that way... I don't create a safe environment when I work. I chain-smoke cigarettes, and I'm writing tons of notes, and I'm working on all sorts of sense memory and personification. My therapist always tells me that I should try to work at 70 percent because I'm hurting myself. Hearing about you being with your loved ones and the way that you're able to balance your lives is a really important message for a lot of people."

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures Inc.

5. Tom Cruise

We know it seems that Tom Cruise is just being Tom Cruise in every one of his movies, but Cruise has been as close as it gets to living as if he were really the super-agent Ethan Hunt. He does his own stunts, and he has also learned a variety of skills like skydiving, flying helicopters, scaling mountains, and riding motorcycles.

And the best part is he's nothing but serious about it. He knows he's got one job: to entertain you, and he's committed to doing that job well.

Plus, he's been nominated for three Oscars for other films, so he also has the acting chops.

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6. Jamie Foxx

To play the music legend Ray Charles, who went blind in his childhood due to an illness, Foxx, at Ray director Taylor Hackford's request, agreed to have his eyes glued shut.

"Imagine having your eyes glued shut for 14 hours a day," Foxx said. "That's your jail sentence."

He wore prosthetics made to look like Charles' actual eyelids. And while he did already know how to play the piano, he studiously practiced for the part, and all the playing onscreen was actually his.

He also lost almost 30 pounds to look more like the musician. For two weeks, he also weathered panic attacks and claustrophobia before he kind of got used to his eyes being glued shut.

Nicola Goode/Universal

7. Jim Carrey

Carrey idolized Andy Kaufman, and he admits he was probably insufferable in the four months he spent in the role of the late comedian in the 1999 biopic Man on the Moon.

"I didn't black out, but the balance was way in Andy's corner," Carrey said, who won a Golden Globe for the film. "I broke a couple of times on weekends and stuff, but pretty much from when I woke up to when I went to bed, the choices were all his."

Carrey said that the choices were either Kaufman's or sometimes his alter ego, Tony Clinton, an unmitigated jerk who would sometimes treat director Milos Forman poorly. "I love Milos and I respect him greatly, but Tony doesn't," Carrey explained. "Somewhere in the background, there's a little piece of Jim going, 'Oh, no, you're not going to do that.' But I was just along for the ride."

While some people thought that he channeled Kaufman's spirit appropriately, tales of Carrey's behavior on set didn't sit well with Martin Freeman, who hasn't worked with Carrey yet. "For me, and I'm genuinely sure Jim Carrey is a lovely and smart person, but it was the most self-aggrandizing, selfish, f--king narcissistic nonsense I have ever seen. The idea that anything in our culture would celebrate that or support it is deranged, literally deranged," he said on the Off Menu podcast.

Francois Duhamel/Universal/Kobal/Shutterstock

8. Hilary Swank

For her first Oscar win, Swank played Brandon Teena in the devastating film Boys Don't Cry. For the role, Swank cut her hair short, stuffed her pants, and taped her breasts down.

She also ventured into her Los Angeles area home and introduced herself as "Hillary's brother, James."

"I was treated so differently in public," Swank told The New York Times. She also noted that if shopkeepers thought she was a boy, they watched her more closely, and if people couldn't define what she was, they didn't want anything to do with her.

The film is based on a tragic true story of a boy who was murdered on New Year's Eve in 1993 by two men he'd counted as friends until they discovered he was biologically female. While actually making the film, Swank found it more upsetting than she had anticipated, so she called her then-husband Chad Lowe to join her.

"I told him I was having a really hard time getting through this," she said. "I had to keep a little bit of distance from the fact that this actually happened to someone."

Determined to give the character justice, Swank acknowledged to Variety in 2020 that if the film were made today, it would have been better portrayed by a trans actor.

At the time it was made, it wouldn't have been easy, however. Swank explained, "I mean, trans people weren't really walking around in the world saying, 'Hey, I'm trans.' Twenty-one years later, not only are trans people living their lives, thankfully, [although] we still have a long way to go in terms of their safety and inclusivity, but we now have a number of trans actors who would obviously be a lot more suitable for the role and have the opportunity to actually audition for it."

Fox Searchlight Pictures

9. Forest Whitaker

The Oscar winner admittedly went all in for his role as the ruthless Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in the film The Last King of Scotland. Not only did he gain 50 pounds, but he also truly embodied the man.

"That was an all-encompassing experience for me," Whitaker recalled to PeopleTV in 2018. "I started working on it months and months before I even came to Africa, just trying to learn Kiswahili and understand the history."

He was so immersed in the role that he basically needed an exorcism to get out of it once the shooting was done. "I remember the first day when I knew we were done; I was taking a shower and I was just trying to get the voice [out of my head], screaming it out of myself to let myself feel free," Whitaker said. "Certain things stayed with me for a long time. Some characters stay with you longer."

It wasn't fun for the rest of the cast either. "Forest stayed in character the whole time," co-star David Oyelowo told PeopleTV in 2019. "It was a nightmare." Pause. "Sorry, Forest, it was a nightmare."

He remembered walking past Forest one night and greeting him with a hello, but the actor only replied in a series of unintelligible growls. "Literally, that was the sound he made," Oyelowo insisted. "I went, 'That's the last time I'm speaking to you for the entire thing. But you know, you watch the performance and you go '[shrug of acknowledgment] it was worth it.'"

Fox Searchlight/Kobal/Shutterstock

10. Marlon Brando

Brando is the original method man, and his name always comes up in discussions regarding the real acting process.

Brando did, after all, truly infuse his work with emotion pulled from his own life experiences. Some of his most memorable performances were in films like On the Waterfront and A Streetcar Named Desire.

"Everything that you do—make it as real as you can," the two-time Oscar winner once advised, "Make it alive. Make it tangible. Find the truth of that moment."

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Fully committing to a character might not be the most fun experience for the actor or their co-stars, but we can definitely say that, in the end, it's the results that matter, and with these actors, it was all worth it. Their performances in those films were truly memorable and have helped them make a mark in their careers.

Which one was your favorite?