Method actors are a different breed. Consider Dustin Hoffman. The notoriously intense performer habitually put his directors through their paces by hurtling himself deep into character. It wasn't enough for Hoffman to study the screenplay like it was holy writ; he had to get himself on the same emotional frequency as his characters, even if this meant endangering his physical and mental health. This is what he did on the set of John Schlesinger's "Marathon Man" prior to shooting the classic torture scene wherein Laurence Olivier's Nazi dentist literally attempts to drill information out of him. Hoffman, who was already contending with a divorce at the time, not only deprived himself of sleep but made the hard-partying scene at Studio 54. By the time he was seated in front of Olivier, he was a sweaty, addled mess, which prompted the planet's greatest living Shakespearean actor at the time to ask his co-star,...