Drew Barrymore Isn’t Too Impressed by Andrew Garfield Giving Up Sex for Six Months Before Filming ‘Silence’: ‘Yeah, So?’

Consider Drew Barrymore unimpressed with at least some of Andrew Garfield’s method acting choices during the making of Martin Scorsese’s “Silence.” Garfield told Marc Maron in August that he abstained from sex for six months in order to play a Jesuit priest in the Scorsese religious drama. Barrymore’s reaction? “Yeah, so?”

Garfield’s “Silence” prep came up during the Sept. 20 episode of “The Drew Barrymore Show” (via Decider), with co-host Ross Matthews joking, “I get abstaining from sex, I mean I did that my entire 20s, right?” Barrymore said back, “What’s wrong with me that six months doesn’t seem like a very long time? I was like, ‘Yeah so?’”

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“We buried the lede there, that’s the headline,” Matthews added. “Drew can go six months, no big deal.”

Barrymore later cited Christian Bale and Matthew McConaughey as actors who practice method acting with strong results. Barrymore said she understands why actors need to “transform and fully commit” to a character during the entirety of filming.

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“I definitely [did], on certain projects, like when I did ‘Grey Gardens,’ this film I did where I played beloved real-life woman Edie Beale,” Barrymore added. “I was so nervous I didn’t really chit chat with everybody on set, I just really stayed in character.”

During his appearance on Maron’s “WTF” podcast, Garfield said there are “a lot of misconceptions about what method acting is,” adding, “People are still acting in that way, and it’s not about being an asshole to everyone on set. It’s actually just about living truthfully under imagined circumstances, and being really nice to the crew simultaneously, and being a normal human being, and being able to drop it when you need to and staying in it when you want to stay in it.”

Garfield went celibate and undertook fasting for long periods during the six months of prep for “Silence.”

“I’m kind of bothered by this idea that ‘method acting is fucking bullshit,'” Garfield added. “No, I don’t think you know what method acting is if you’re calling it bullshit, or you just worked with someone who claims to be a method actor who isn’t actually acting the method at all. It’s also very private. I don’t want people to see the fucking pipes of my toilet. I don’t want them to see how I’m making the sausage.”

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