ABSTRACT
Rather than being the marginal figures they have sometimes appeared in previous critical histories, these women expanded and energized the Method through their feminist transformations. Often, realism looked different in their incarnations, and rather than being “hysterical”, or “explosive”, Method women often gave performances of subdued emotion and anti-glamorous affect. In Tootsie, a male Method actor who cannot get any jobs because of his reputation for being difficult to work with reinvents himself as a woman, adopting a practical, no-nonsense middle-aged wardrobe and acting persona something like Patricia Neal’s. Loden came from a working-class background in North Carolina. She moved to New York and used modeling as a way to make a living while studying art and acting. Loden got the idea for her screenplay from a newspaper article she read about a woman who had been an accomplice to a robbery similar to the one depicted in the film, and upon being sentenced to 20 years, thanked the judge.
