It has been a long while since anyone saw or heard from Daniel Day-Lewis. After he announcement in 2017 declaring he would no longer work as an actor, just before the debut of The Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis withdrew from the spotlight. Yet, during his hiatus, his legend expanded further.
The Mythos Surrounding His Method
Largely, this legend revolves around his preferred approach to roles. As someone known for immerses himself in the roles he plays – for example, while filming Lincoln, reportedly asked the director call him “Mr. President” throughout the shoot – audiences has grown increasingly obsessed with how he works. Did he really send messages to co-star Sally Field in character as Lincoln? Did he only eat game he hunted for Last of the Mohicans? And did he insist on receiving food via spoon while filming My Left Foot?
Madness in their method: has the public fallen out of love with over-the-top performances?
Now, Daniel Day-Lewis is back in the limelight, somewhat reluctantly, promoting his latest movie Anemone. He is using this to vocalise his frustration regarding how method acting is perceived. “I’m a little cross nowadays when I hear various individuals gobbling off and saying things like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which I think is meant to imply that someone is acting insane in an extreme fashion,” he told a major publication. “Everyone tends to focus on the less important details of the work, and these elements typically include some sort of self-punishment or an experience that causes a severe discomfort or psychological strain. However, in the life of an actor, it has to mainly focus on the internal work.”
An Industry of Imitators
Frankly, it appears like the actor has come out from his retreat and found himself shocked by the acting community that has been created mirroring his methods. If you’re widely considered among the best performers to ever work, and your process involves striking a prop until you break your nose (for Gangs of New York) or enduring two days in solitary confinement without food or water (during In the Name of the Father), then it stands to reason that other actors will attempt to fill that vacuum by trying to mimic their idol.
In other words, we now live in a landscape full of half-cocked Day-Lewis impersonators who want nothing more than to demonstrate the sheer amount of dedication they invest in a character. On the milder side of this trend there are performers such as Lady Gaga, who was determined to win an Oscar for House of Gucci that she spent the entire promotion attempting to persuade people that she transformed into an Italian native for a year and a half in preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who chose to immerse himself into the role as the Joker (for Suicide Squad) through sending “horrifying” gifts to his castmates. These, according to various accounts, included deceased animals to anal beads and used condoms, though the actor refuted the most extreme claims. And then, of course, we have Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully into Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon that filmmakers literally managed to get a full-length documentary out of B-roll of him causing difficulties as impossible as he could for his colleagues.
The Modern Method Practitioners
The foremost practitioner of the Method at the moment seems to be Jeremy Strong (once an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose approach during Succession was so rigorously detailed that it formed the subject of a derisive magazine feature, including statements from individuals who were worried about his conduct (“The toll on himself that worries me,” said Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by it (“I recall him causing others to react with exasperation,” said an anonymous cast member).
The actor claims he ‘did not plan to stop acting, really’
There are numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex over half a year while preparing for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio rested inside a dead animal for The Revenant. It’s quite possible that Austin Butler continues to talk in the style of Elvis, three years after that film came out. All of this, in part, aims to evoke the seriousness with which Day-Lewis approaches his craft.
An Admirable Yet Challenging Battle
And, while his fightback to critics of the Method might be noble, a short publicity tour may prove insufficient to change anyone’s mind, not to mention their behaviour. Perhaps if he wants to remind people what method acting is, or to show them what it can achieve, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to just start making more films. Surely we could all get behind that.
