When the potential movie role of a lifetime comes along, an actor knows that the opportunity comes with certain sacrifices.
Leonardo DiCaprio ate an actual raw bison liver and toughed it through the bitter -40 degree cold for his Oscar-winning role as Hugh Glass in 2015’s The Revenant. Natalie Portman underwent extreme ballet training and shed 20 pounds from her 5-foot-3 frame for Black Swan, which earned her first and only Academy Award for Best Actress.
Whether he could sense the possible career-defining part in The Power of the Dog, Benedict Cumberbatch decided to go down a similar method acting path. According to IndieWire, Cumberbatch learned how to castrate a bull and play the banjo. He also refused to speak with co-stars, like Kirsten Dunst, on set, and avoided taking showers because he “wanted that layer of stink” on him at all times.
While Cumberbatch has since earned early Oscar buzz for the film adaptation of the 1967 novel from Thomas Savage of the same name, he’s already paid the price for his level of commitment more than once. The Doctor Strange star looked to Savage’s novel, which described that one of the character’s defining characteristics was chain-smoking cigarettes that were “perfectly rolled with one-hand.”
Naturally, Cumberbatch picked up smoking… a lot of cigarettes. So much so that he got nicotine poisoning three times. “That was really hard,” he toldEsquire. “Filterless rollies, just take after take after take. I gave myself nicotine poisoning three times. When you have to smoke a lot, it genuinely is horrible.”
According to Healthline, a number of symptoms are tied to nicotine poisoning, including nausea, vomiting, an abnormal heart rate, hearing and vision changes, and more. Treatment depends on the severity of the poisoning, but some possible options include ingesting an activated charcoal or receiving antibiotics.
The Power of the Dog will be released in theaters on Nov. 17.
