Britney Spears accidentally got a bit too into Method acting in Crossroads

Spears starred in the 2002 road-trip comedy with Zoe Saldaña and Taryn Manning

By Emma Keates  |  October 17, 2023 | 4:04pm
Aux News Britney Spears
Britney Spears accidentally got a bit too into Method acting in Crossroads
Britney Spears doing press for Crossroads in 2002 Photo: Carlos Alvarez

At long last, Britney Spears has finally waded into the Method acting discourse. Okay, okay. We know. You probably never want to hear that phrase again, post Jeremy Strong and his “monastic chic” (not to mention, you know, all the other stuff). Still, it seems like Spears actually has a healthier relationship with the whole thing than many other actors who’ve dabbled in the practice.

In her upcoming tell-all memoir The Woman In Me, Spears is set to cover all the obvious major topics, but also spares some room for her 2002 box office flop/cult classic Crossroads, which also stars Zoe Saldaña and Taryn Manning as three childhood friends who reunite on a road trip.

“The experience wasn’t easy for me. My problem wasn’t with anyone involved in the production but with what acting did to my mind,” she writes in a preview excerpt from People. “I think I started Method acting—only I didn’t know how to break out of my character. I really became this other person. Some people do Method acting, but they’re usually aware of the fact that they’re doing it. But I didn’t have any separation at all.”

As a result, Spears started walking and talking differently, she writes, which made her feel like “someone else for months.” The experience was so destabilizing, in fact, that she was “relieved” when it proved to be “the beginning and end of my acting career.”

“The Notebook casting came down to me and Rachel McAdams,” she continued, and while she says it would have been “fun to reconnect with Ryan Gosling after our time on the Mickey Mouse Club,” she’s ultimately “glad I didn’t do it.” “If I had, instead of working on my album In The Zone I’d have been acting like a 1940s heiress day and night.”

“I imagine there are people in the acting field who have dealt with something like that, where they had trouble separating themselves from a character,” she concluded. “I hope I never get close to that occupational hazard again. Living that way, being half yourself and half a fictional character, is messed up. After a while you don’t know what’s real anymore.”

The Woman In Me comes out October 24.

 
Join the discussion...