A good actor is defined who can step into the shoes of his character. He can only reach out to the people if only he can incorporate himself within his role. But he should know how to differentiate between reel and real. To know more know about those who loss themselves to the hands of cinema, read further!

1. Nicolas Cage dressed up like a ghost wizard to get into character :

On the set of Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, Cage wanted to make sure he channeled the flaming-skull-headed spirit just right. So, knowing that his head was going to be replaced with CGI and not wanting to undermine the intensity of his performance, he coated his face in corpse paint and blanketed himself in a costume covered in Egyptian symbols and magical amulets.

He also admitted that his co-workers seemed afraid of him, but that their fear only made his performance stronger. This is probably true, because if there’s one thing one has learned about Nicolas Cage, is that his performances thrive on the terrified confusion of everyone around him.

2. Johnny Depp lived in Hunter S. Thompson’s basement and replicated every aspect of his behavior:

He spent years painstakingly creating his rendition of Hunter S. Thompson for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. He took to living in Thompson’s basement, digging through his manuscripts, interrogating him about his life, and recording those conversations, presumably for personal reference and a sense that the recordings would later be subpoenaed as evidence. After living in Thompson’s basement for an undisclosed amount of time, he took Thompson’s red convertible and drove to Las Vegas to meet with director Terry Gilliam, wearing Thompson’s clothes that hadn’t been washed in 30 years. He doesn’t actually admit to consuming all of the insanity that his portrayal of Thompson does in the film, but he claims to have been true to the character while remaining “very responsible.”

3. Ashton Kutcher hospitalized himself for a Steve Jobs movie no One Saw:

At first, many of Steve Jobs films were there where audience gave hardly any importance. So, when Ashton Kutcher played the kooky fruit loving entrepreneur Steve Jobs in the 2013 biopic of Jobs, he decided that he would replicate Jobs’ personal diet to help him embody the tech pioneer. For an entire month, Kutcher became a fruitarian and he was obsessed with it. Two days before the movie was set to begin filming, he ended up in the emergency room, under so much pain and suffering from numerous vitamin deficiencies and a marked decrease in bone density.

4. Val Kilmer tried to become  Jim Morrison for The Doors:

When he was cast to play Jim Morrison in the film The Doors, Val Kilmer wanted to make sure his performance was as authentic as possible, so he took the time to learn a few of Morrison’s songs, which is completely reasonable. The final version of The Doors contains only 15 songs, which means that Val Kilmer spent countless hours carefully rehearsing 35 songs for absolutely no reason. Kilmer was just as obsessive when it came to getting inside Morrison’s head. Kilmer was so obsessed with creating a believable portrayal of Jim Morrison that, by the end of filming, he had everyone on set referring to him as “Jim,” all of the time.

5. Daniel Day-Lewis refuses to break character and lived in the wilderness for half a year:

Daniel Day Lewis is one of the most notorious method actors who has ever lived, because he consistently does crazy things to get into character for his roles. When Day-Lewis played Nathaniel Poe in Last of the Mohicans, he decided his character would not be believable to any audience unless he spent six months living in the woods, which he did. During that time, he learned to hunt and skin animals to feed and clothe himself, and he even taught himself how to build a goddamned canoe, because Daniel Day Lewis is a tap dancing maniac.

6. Shia LaBeouf cut his face and refused to bathe for Fury:

In order to get into the mindset of a cagey World War II tank soldier, he made it his mission to remain as smelly as possible for the entire shoot. Labeouf went four months without showering in order to experience what he imagined working on a tank crew in the 1940s must have been like. In order to shape the perfect character, he claims, he became Christian, spent a month on an army base, and spent days watching horses die. He also pulled out one of his own teeth and cut his face open in front of his castmates, who by that point were so unsettled by his antics that he was banished to a separate bed and breakfast for the duration of the shoot.

7. Jared Leto got way too into The Joker:

Jared Leto is so goddamned excited to be playing The Joker that his preparation techniques are actually psychotic.  Dressing like a homeless experimental musician, Leto sent disturbing gifts to his fellow cast members in order to capture the spirit of the Clown Prince of Crime.  He sent the entire cast a video of him with a dead pig. Amazingly, he found time in between all this important preparation work to take a Buffalo Bill selfie and put it on the Internet to delight Suicide Squad fans the world over. The film is supposed to be so dark and emotionally traumatizing that the producers provided the cast with access to an on-set therapist to console them between takes, which seems to suggest that they have forgotten they are supposed to be making a comic book fantasy and not Shoah.

8. Joaquin Phoenix went on a yearlong, crazed hiatus for I’m Still Here (2010):

After the two-time Academy Award nominee decided to quit acting to pursue a career in hip hop, most people had no idea what was going on and had virtually written it off as a hoax. After about an year of completely bizarre behavior and public appearances, Phoenix’s 2010 documentary I’m Still Here was released and declared to be staged. The actor later won an academy award for himself, so we can be sure he hasn’t lost it just yet.

9.  Kate Winslet took months to recover from performing in The Reader (2008):

Kate Winslet’s performance as a Nazi concentration camp guard for the 2008 drama film The Reader did not only earn her her first and only academy award win, it also took a significant toll on the actress for the months following the movie’s completion. She’s said that it took months for her to fully break free of the part, comparing leaving the character behind to escaping a serious car accident.

10.  Adrian Brody hungered and isolated himself for The Pianist (2002):

Brody gave it all he had, to be able to perform in Roman Polanski’s 2002 drama, The Pianist. Having mentioned that he felt that the desperation that comes out of hunger cannot be faked and has to be experienced, Brody hungered himself down to 130 pounds to pull off the emaciated look of a Holocaust survivor. He is reported to have said that his biggest fear was keeping his sanity and it took him over a year and a half to settle back into his normal life.