Actor Ryan Gosling enlisted a dream analyst to help the stars of his directorial debut film How to Catch a Monster form their characters.
Saoirse Ronan, who stars in the film alongside Christina Hendricks, Eva Mendes and Matt Smith, reveals the expert instructed the actors to urge their subconscious to dream and then write down the details from their sleeping thoughts for discussion.
She tells Vulture.com, “(The letters would read), ‘Dear inner self, if it is your will, reveal to me in a dream tonight what my character’s relationship is to this other character.
“We would come in the next day to discuss our dreams with each other, and act them out. I’d tell Greta (the analyst), ‘Listen, I don’t know what this is, but I was doing this last night, and then this person popped up (in my dream),’ and she’d make sense out of it.
“That was our rehearsal. It made us become very close. It was a very new method for me, because all of a sudden, Ryan was encouraging us to incorporate our own personalities into our characters, how you feel about things, what your anxieties are, and things like that.”
How to Catch a Monster is set to hit theaters later this year.
