Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto poured themselves into their Dallas Buyers Club characters, writes Steven Zeitchik, of the Los Angeles Times.
Gaunt and moustachied, the actor called for another shot of Johnnie Walker - if he meant a prop liquid, the bartender did not seem to know it - and tightened his facial muscles almost to the breaking point.
''Man, if you're up there, you better be listening,'' McConaughey whispered, candles from the table in front of him flickering shadows on his contorted face as he half-beseeched, half-ordered the heavens. A man with a camera on his shoulder lay sprawled on the club's stage, the lens poking between a dancer's legs and aimed squarely at the actor's face.
''Send me a sign.''
A native son of Texas, McConaughey has convincingly inhabited a number of heretical-yet-charming cowboys in his two-decade film career. But as his intense focus and startling appearance in the strip-club scene for Jean-Marc Vallee's Dallas Buyers Club demonstrates, he has never gone to as dark a place with his character - or as extensive a method with his preparation - as he has in the Aids drama, which centres on a real-life man named Ron Woodroof.
As the movie ups the dramatic quotient for McConaughey, it also poses questions about the benefits - and limits - of such preparation. Matching his single-minded focus in the film is Jared Leto, the actor-turned-rocker who returned to acting after a five-year hiatus to play Rayon, a transgender Aids patient who becomes Woodroof's unlikely friend and business partner. Like McConaughey, he has earned early raves for his character's authenticity, but underwent an equally fraught process.
Dallas Buyers Club stars McConaughey as Woodroof, a homophobic Texas electrician who was diagnosed with Aids in the mid-1980s. Stunned, he began importing unapproved treatments, prolonging thousands of lives in the process.
To embody their characters, McConaughey consulted Woodroof's diary heavily during the shoot, while Leto wore high heels continually even, sometimes, in his trailer. Both men dropped significant amounts of weight to persuasively play sick people.
''It's one of the most extreme transformations I ever made,'' said Leto, no stranger to radical metamorphoses, having taken on junkie mannerisms in Requiem for a Dream and gaining 25kg to play John Lennon's killer in Chapter 27.
''But it's not about just `living as the person' or some kind of effect, like a lot of people seem to believe. It's about developing a level of concentration without having to wait for permission for a director to yell ''action'.''
McConaughey knew early on he wanted to immerse himself in the part. But after trying to get the film made for nearly three years - the project itself has a development history that dates back to 1992 and includes failed attempts by Ryan Gosling and Brad Pitt - McConaughey began shedding weight even before a financier had committed. Watching their client grow more emaciated, the actor's representatives scrambled to get money after an investor fell through.
''What the weight loss did was give me a construct for the character,'' McConaughey, who lost more than 15kg, said. The process led him deeper into Woodroof's personality, for practical reasons, if nothing else.
''For about 3 hours a day, I'm normally either thinking about food, eating food or preparing food. So suddenly I had that time. I cut out social gatherings. And because Ron was so pale, I wouldn't go out in the sunlight. That's pretty much seven hours a day,'' he said.
''I'd reprogrammed my existence. And then I needed something else to entertain my mind.''
That something became Ron Woodroof, who died in 1992. McConaughey borrowed home videos from his family and gained access to the man's diary, which included writings about the redneck-type personality's unlikely interests, such as big band jazz and ''dreamer'' aspirations, as McConaughey put it. The actor consulted it before and during shooting, scribbling ideas for the character in his own journal.
''It gave me Ron's monologue, which allowed me to understand how he might be thinking in moments like the strip-club scene.''
Though the Rayon character is a screenwriter's construct, Leto became similarly submerged. After nabbing the role from a sceptical Vallee by appearing in a Skype audition in character as Rayon, he, too, lost weight - about 13kg - and consciously changed his walk and his muscle movements. He moved his rock-star voice to an alto register, inspired by scores of conversations with transgender individuals.
The goal was to create a cross-dressing character who, though flamboyantly expressive, defied the stereotype of the on-screen drag queen.
''A lot of the time in movies we see the drag queen dancing on the table with a feather boa, screaming a clever line and running out of the room. I didn't want to do that,'' he said.
''I wanted to bring a real person to life.''
On set, Leto (who last shot a movie in 2007, the sci-fi Mr Nobody) talked to crew members - when he talked at all - only as Rayon. (Vallee likes to joke that he only met Leto seven months after production wrapped, at the Toronto International Film Festival in September.) After a while, Leto said, ''I even started dreaming as Rayon.''
Some might roll their eyes at these actorly conceits; after all, film acting is role-playing, not life-swapping. Are there limits to how fully a person can turn into another human being before it becomes self-conscious?Leto agrees the process can be emphasised at the expense of the result.
''At the end of the day, staying in character, not staying in character, who really gives a ... It's whatever gets you where you need to go,'' he said.
But he also believes these techniques were necessary in his case.
''Maybe a veteran can eat a taco and say something funny, then the camera goes on and he can scream at the heavens and make people cry. I can't do that.''
Substantial weight change, meanwhile, though lending credibility to a part, is also such a time-honoured acting tradition (Robert De Niro in Raging Bull, Christian Bale in The Fighter) it has begun to verge on the cliche. Starving oneself for a role may be an act of self-punishment, but it can also be an act of vanity, a chance for an actor to flaunt his commitment.
The modern tabloid media have heightened the effect, raising the spectre of a publicity gimmick.
''Here's my feeling,'' McConaughey said.
''The weight loss informed my focus in the role. But the length that an artist will go to is by no means a measure of excellence. It's just the easy narrative, the shocking photo that's going to get you to click on a gossip piece. And I hope the public's 30-second, 'What's up, give me the one-liner' attitude doesn't lead the narrative.''
Or as Leto puts it: ''It's just a tool. There are much more impactful tools.''
And not to be dismissed, the actors say, are the personal consequences of a deep transformation. McConaughey said he would catch himself using Woodroof's sharp-tongued patter when he returned to his wife and young children at the New Orleans home they rented during the shoot.
It would startle his family, so he would rein it in. And he said although the calorie restriction made him mentally sharper, that was not always a good thing.
''My head was chewing on everything,'' he said.
''I wasn't taking the first answer from anyone. I was trying to get to the bottom of everything, which could be laborious for everyone around me.''
He paused.
''And for me.''
Freebies
We have five double passes to Dallas Buyers Club to give away. To enter, simply send your name, address and daytime phone number to playtime@odt.co.nz. Please put ''Dallas Buyers Club'' in the subject line. Entries close at noon on Wednesday.
