Daniel Day-Lewis Has Nothing On Maria Bakalova’s Method Acting Approach To ‘Borat Subsequent Moviefilm’

Famous method actor Daniel Day-Lewis visited restaurants in a wheelchair while shooting My Left Foot; studied fashion for Phantom Thread; and texted his Lincoln co-stars as Abraham Lincoln. Hold my skunked beer, says Maria Bakalova.

The Borat Subsequent Moviefilm actress told Collider that to get in character to play Borat’s daughter Tutar, she made herself stinky. Very, very stinky.

Bakalova did three screen tests for the role, two with Borat himself, Sacha Baron Cohen, and another to see how she would handle a scene by herself among non-actors. “I remember that some of [the production team] advised me, ‘Don’t be clean, don’t prepare yourself to look pretty or to be glam… Try to not take [a] shower.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, okay, I mean I’m ready for it, but I’m in the middle of another production, so it’s gonna be devastating for the rest of the crew in the movie that I was shooting.’ So I made something super smelly, stinky with banana peels, old eggs, vinegar, old olive oil, onions. And I mixed it and it was probably the worst smell that you can ever imagine,” she said.

“And I put it all over me, and I started hugging and touching people for [goodbyes], and they were like, ‘Okay, this is not an actor, for sure.’ So that was probably the last audition that I went [on], and it was maybe two weeks before I came to America and we started shooting this crazy, beautiful roller-coaster.”

Daniel Day-Lewis was 43 years old when he was nominated for his first Academy Award. Bakalova is only 24. I’m just saying…