Acting is a pretty difficult thing. The idea of completely transforming your psyche into another person, another character, sounds very difficult.
And that stiffness tends to translate into the real world—when you spend half your life pretending to be others, the awkwardness gets real.
But for legendary director Steven Spielberg, there's a pretty easy way to get iconic actors to mingle with each other. And, according to MSN, it's getting stuck in at the kitchen table.
He discussed how he manages to get actors unstuck during a feature on Amy Poehler's Good Hang podcast. The host asked him how he deals with actors who are nervous to meet him.
I mean, that's for sure a fair question. After all, who wouldn't be at least a little nervous to meet someone of that caliber? But Spielberg had a pretty sweet response.
And he knows his reputation precedes him. But he made a pretty stark admission—he's just as nervous as they are! "I've always seen myself early in my career being successful, but also feeling a little bit like a fake Western street on a Hollywood backlot... And there's just a bunch of 2x4s holding up the facade," he explained. An apt comparison for a filmmaking legend.
Spielberg continued, "And if people only knew how nervous I am and how stressed I get, they wouldn't be so nervous in front of me."
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Steven Spielberg Revealed the Origin of the Kitchen Method
He then went on to reveal the first time he used the method. "I just came up with a method, which I used for a couple of pictures—starting with Raiders Of The Lost Ark."
"I decided that all the actors I auditioned, and, in person, I'm going to meet them in a kitchen. And we're going to cook. We're going to actually cook. And, so for a couple of movies starting with Raiders, everybody that came in met me in a kitchen and we were cooking stuff. And that was how everybody relaxed around good food."
I do think that method would work on me, too. There's nothing like baking after a stressful week. He put it best himself - "Everybody becomes so real when they're covered in flour."
