I need the term for when an actor goes to live with the common folk or experience something in real life so s/he can really play-out his/her role. What is this called? Character research? Or, is there some other term for this? Thanks!
Method acting, or at least a form of it.
I’ve heard it described on more than one occasion as “researching a role”. Of some relevance is James Woods’ appearance on The Simpsons, at a job interview for the Kwik-E-Mart at a time when Apu had been fired:
Interviewer 1: Name?
James Woods: James Woods, heh.
Interviewer 2: Previous job experience?
Woods: Ooh, uh, let’s see, True Believer, uh, Salvador, Onion Field, uh –The Hard Way?
I-1: Wait, wait a minute. Those aren’t convenience stores! That sounds more like the resume of a Hollywood movie star.
Woods: [chuckles] You know, er.
I-1 and I-2: [gasp] James Woods!
I-2: Why would you want to work at a Kwik-E-Mart?
Woods: To be honest, in my upcoming movie I’m going to be playing this tightly-wound convenience store clerk and, I kind of like to research my roles and really get into it. For instance, True Believer? I actually worked in a law firm for two months. And then, the film Chaplin? I had a little cameo in that. I actually traveled in time, back to the twenties, where – oh, heh, I’ve said too much.
Later on, during a phone conversation:
Woods: Tony, you’re my agent. You have to do something about this. … How can it be the same movie if they’ve changed my character from a tightly-wound convenience store clerk to a jittery Eskimo firefighter? …Uh-huh…uh-huh…mm-hmm…well, actually, that’s a pretty good explanation.
And at the end:
Woods: But as for me, I’m off to battle aliens on a faraway planet.
Marge: That sounds like a good movie.
Woods: Yes…yes, a…a movie, yes.
I vote for Bryan Ekars’s answer. The term “method acting” has been used to describe everything from actors who mumble their lines (as opposed to declaiming them) to “I have to cry in this scene, so I’ll think about the time my dog got run over.” In any event, it’s a term that is used more in regards to what an actor does on stage, rather than how s/he researches a role.
A little known fact is that in researching his role in Being John Malkovich John Malkovich spent over 45 years, well, being John Malkovich. A greater committment to his craft has never been shown by any actor.
The Method, grossly simplified, is about finding a way to actual experience the emotions that your character is experiencing, so as to create a more “authentic” performance. If an actor chooses to research their role so thoroughly as to go and live among the kind of people they intend to portray, that would be completely in keeping with The Method. That is not to say, however, that one need be a practitioner of The Method to go to such extremes.
FWIW, I eschew the term “Method acting,” which I believe to be an oxymoron.
Christian Bale.
In particular, Bale went from starving himself to a skeleton in The Machinist to beefed and buff for Batman. I’m fairly sure his doctors had a thing or two to say to him about that.
Character research. Some actors go farther with it than others, of course. Robert DeNiro really packed on the pounds for Raging Bull, and Renee Zellwegger in Bridget Jones; both later had to/chose to lose it all again. Brad Pitt hung out in an asylum for awhile to soak up the vibes before filming Twelve Monkeys. The actors playing soldiers in Platoon and Saving Private Ryan all went through intensive “boot camps” to toughen them up and get them in a military frame of mind. Daniel Day Lewis carried his musket with him everywhere while filming The Last of the Mohicans, even while “off duty,” and Viggo Mortensen did the same with his sword during the filming of the LOTR trilogy, I’ve read.
I have to go with character research, not method acting, here. Sometimes, an actor will join us mortals to study how to be and talk and act like someone from a certain walk of life…as opposed to trying to make themselves cry on the spot.
That’s research.
Method acting is a matter of drawing on one’s experience, memories, emotions to give a performance. Research is part of the method process, but is not “method acting” in and of itself.
No matter what training he or she has or what acting approach an actor follows, research is often part of an actor’s preparation process.
An excellent actor to read up and study (!) for process and preparation, if you can, is Vincent d’Onofrio.
Aren’t you saying the same thing? Which is to say- Method acting is drawing on ones owns experiences to perform. But living through the experience isn’t part of the process. When an actor specifically goes out to experience something that is a part of a role- it is so that they can, through use of “The Method” perform it acurately later.
The actual experience, sure is research- but it is research in a Method Acting style of approach.
As opposed to say, creatively coming up with various ideas and strategies for acting like you’ve run a marathon without actually ever having done so.
Gaining and losing weight, things like that I would discount as method acting. The actor isn’t drawing on their experience to gain weight, they’re creating the character to make it real. So to me, Renee Zellwegger getting nice and pudgy for Bridget Jones is more of a character creation. But actually living as a low level paper pusher for an English company (which she did) so she could properly learn the accent and real English life “Method style” research. (She could have studied with a voice coach, read on English culture, etc. ) Either way, the Method is still the reason behind the madness.
I guess what I’m saying is that Research is a component of Method Acting, not the definition of Method Acting.
What the OP was describing was mainly the Research process. 
Either way, it’s all theory 