Mads Mikkelsen rips method acting as 'just pretentious'

I support actors doing whatever is right for them, up to a point a point, to be able to give their best performance. The point I referred to is when their "method" becomes disruptive to others and/or the production.

And yet I am sure that Mikkelsen practices a form of it himself. Some actors, like Day-Lewis stick to the traditional formula of understanding your character to a point where you can be him/her even off-set. You are always inside that person and vice versa.

But a lot of Method training today involves observation of how people really talk, move, and react in real life. Improvisation is frequently used to train oneself in unselfconsciously natural movement. It is a commonplace for acting teachers to give students a problem like: you are sitting alone in an office waiting room. You hear a slight sound, maybe a scratching or a beeping sound. Now, your job is to try to locate where the sound is coming from. Try it yourself. Acting as if you are being unconsciously natural is incredibly difficult. That is what a lot of acting training is about. Something like this is likely what Mikkelsen would describe if you discussed acting theory with him.

Even Stanislavski himself, the creator of the Method, later in life, backed off of the “emotion memory” part of his teaching theory.