Anya Taylor-Joy says women don't Method act because they "have things to take care of" and cannot afford to "completely lose our minds."

Speaking to Complex News, Taylor-Joy described acting as a "controlled psychosis," likening the experience of inhabiting a character to having a sister or roommate check in for a little bit. But sustaining that full-time, she said, is something she cannot imagine — actors work with hundreds of people and have a responsibility to be good to them and help them do their best work Variety.

Method acting, for anyone who has heard the phrase without the context, is a technique where performers stay in character between scenes — sometimes for the entire length of a shoot. It has produced some of the most celebrated performances in cinema history, and some of the most talked-about behaviour on set.

Taylor-Joy's remarks land in a conversation that has been building for months. Kristen Stewart told The New York Times in December 2025 that acting is "quite embarrassing and un-masculine" and that Method acting serves as a way for some male actors to temper the "inherently vulnerable" side of performing. She said she had never heard of a female actor being Method, describing performance itself as "inherently submissive" Variety.

Daniel Day-Lewis, the actor most associated with the technique, pushed back during his 2025 press tour for the film Anemone. At the London Film Festival, he said recent commentary about Method acting comes from people with little or no understanding of what it actually involves. Speaking to Big Issue, he framed the practice as being about "freeing yourself so you present your colleagues with a living, breathing human being they can interact with," and said he is annoyed by the "went full Method" characterisation that attaches lunacy to the idea Big Issue.

Jodie Foster offered a different perspective. She recalled that Robert De Niro was "really uninteresting" to her during the filming of Taxi Driver because he was taking a Method approach to his character Variety.

Britney Spears once described her own brush with the technique, saying she started Method acting without knowing how to break out of character and "really became this other person" Variety.

Taylor-Joy, for her part, has said that what makes her say yes to a role depends on the individual project, and that people and characters inadvertently end up inspiring her The Hollywood Reporter.

What makes the debate stick is that nobody is arguing about whether the performances work. They are arguing about what it costs the people around them.