It’s been a long while since anyone saw or heard from Daniel Day-Lewis. After he statement in 2017 declaring he would cease to pursue acting, just before the debut of The Phantom Thread, the actor quietly faded from view. Yet, in his absence, his reputation expanded further.
The Legend of His Method
Largely, this legend revolves around his favored style of working. Being an actor who famously immerses himself in the roles he plays – for instance, while filming the Lincoln biopic, he had Steven Spielberg call him “Mr President” throughout the shoot – the world has grown increasingly obsessed with how he works. Is it true he really send messages to co-star Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Did he only eat animals he’d killed during The Last of the Mohicans? Did he demand receiving food via spoon while filming My Left Foot?
Extreme acting methods: has the public lost interest with over-the-top performances?
Currently, Daniel Day-Lewis is back in the limelight, somewhat reluctantly, promoting his latest movie Anemone. And he is using this to express his anger regarding how method acting is perceived. “I am somewhat annoyed nowadays when I hear various individuals talking carelessly and saying things like ‘gone full method’, which seems is meant to imply that a person’s acting insane in an extreme fashion,” he told a major publication. “People tends to focus on the less important aspects of acting, and those details always seem to involve some form of self-punishment or a situation that imposes upon oneself extreme unease or mental instability. However, in the life for a performer, it has to mainly focus on the inner transformation.”
An Industry of Imitators
Frankly, this sounds like the actor has emerged from seclusion only to discover aghast at the acting community that has developed in his image. If you’re regarded as among the best actors in history, and your approach includes headbutting a dummy to the point of injury (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 want to fill that vacuum by trying to mimic your hero.
Essentially, we exist in an environment populated by imperfect Day-Lewis impersonators who want nothing more than to demonstrate the sheer amount of effort they invest in a character. At the shallow end 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 trying to convince everyone that she transformed into an Italian native over 18 months in preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who decided to immerse himself in the character of the Joker (in Suicide Squad) through sending “disturbing” presents to his castmates. These items, depending on who you ask, included deceased animals to anal beads and used condoms, although Leto denied those worst excesses. Then, of course, there is Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully as Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that filmmakers literally managed to get a feature-length documentary from behind-the-scenes footage of him causing difficulties as impossible as he could for everyone around him.
The Modern Followers of the Method
The foremost practitioner of the Method at the moment seems to be Jeremy Strong (once an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose process while filming Succession was so laboriously intensive that it became the basis of a critical New Yorker profile, full of quotes from people who were either concerned for his behaviour (“The toll on himself concerns me,” remarked Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by it (“I remember [him] making others to react with exasperation,” stated an unnamed co-star).
The actor says he ‘never intended to stop acting, truly’
There are so many other examples. Andrew Garfield went celibate for six months while preparing for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in a dead animal during The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that actor Austin Butler still speaks in the style of Elvis, years following the movie’s release. Each of these instances, to some extent, aims to evoke the seriousness with which Day-Lewis approaches his work.
A Noble But Uphill Fight
And, although his rebuttal against method detractors could be commendable, a brief promotional cycle might not be enough to change anyone’s mind, let alone their practices. Maybe if he wishes to make audiences recall the true essence of the Method, or to demonstrate its potential results, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to just start making more films. Certainly everyone would get behind that.
